Time Capsule: When My Daughter Was 5 Months Old

Going through some old notebooks I found some journal entries from when my daughter Jackie was 5 months old.  I'm an infoholic so I talked about world politics as well as what was going on in my personal life.  It's an interesting look at how much the world has changed in the last 16 years.  The Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were in the process of breaking up, but hadn't yet.  Jackie wasn't quite crawling yet.

-----------------------

December 10, 1991

-----------------------

 In the real world, Jackie is still a little stopped up.  Linda is back to school and I'm back to work, though my car is still not functioning too well. Elaine is doing well so far.  We are just recovering from a round of the flu.

 In the world of politics and nations, Gorbachev and Yeltsin are at dagger points again.  Yeltsin has declared the Soviet Union dissolved.  Gorbachev says basically no way.  Yeltsin will probably win if it comes to a showdown, but hopefully they will compromise somehow.
 

-----------------------

December 11, 1991

-----------------------

I'm still getting over the after-effects of the flu.  I did lift weights today, so hopefully I'm most of the way back.  The Soviet Union is still bogged down in bickering while the economy disintegrates.  There are some things that I hope hold together over there:

      Their space program

      Command and control over their nukes

      Scientific---especially nuclear scientific institutions

      Historical archives.

-----------------------

December 12, 1991

-----------------------

Jackie is still suffering the aftermath of the flu.  My car is still not fixed.  The Yugoslav civil war is grinding stupidly on.  The Soviet crisis appears to be easing a bit.  Things are still tense, but it looks like Gorbachev and Yeltsin will probably reach some kind of compromise.  Gorbachev will probably end up with some kind of post tat is mainly symbolic, but does have power over some things—probably nukes, navy, air defense, and maybe the space program.

 I would love to see all of the Russian and Soviet archives opened up to historians, and all of the Soviet inventions made available to us, especially the space stuff.  The metallurgical stuff would probably help too.  An influx of world-class technology and scientists might off-set our lack of investment, at least for a while.

------------------------

December 18, 1991

------------------------

 
So far today I lifted weights at noon and then drank two-thirds of a 2 liter bottle of diet Pepsi.

 
In the real world, Jackie is a couple of days past 5 months old.  She is getting her first tooth and getting a little more mobility.  She can roll over fairly regularly, though it is still hard for her.  She can support her weight standing up for a few seconds at a time and really enjoys it.  She can't balance herself well enough to to stand on her own yet.  She babbles and coos a lot.  At this point I think we have a normal, healthy, reasonably intelligent baby in the making.  I doubt if she'll be a near-genius like my sister, but I think that she will be definitely above average.
 

----------------------

January 4, 1992

---------------------

 
In world news: Russia has raised prices with little reaction so far.  Yugoslavia is on about its 17^th ceasefire between the Serbs and Croats.  This one appears to be a little more serious than the others, but who knows.  Ex-Soviet Georgia is still tearing itself apart.
 

There are ominous rumblings out of Cuba.  Their economy is in really bad shape.  Given the right spark things could go like Romania did.  I suspect that a Cuban overthrow would be really bloody and potentially nasty.  Castro and company would fight back viciously.  I also suspect that the Cuban exiles would try awfully hard to get involved.  To what extent would Bush let them?  He might look the other way while they infiltrated.  I have mixed emotions about Cuba.  If communism is really dead in Russia I would say let him be.

 
At any rate that could be hitting the fan at any time.  Nightmare scenario: The Cubans have a civil war and somehow drag us into it.  North Korea sees this as their last chance and goes South.  Iraq jumps the Kurds, and the Red Army tries another coup. 

 
This would all only be possible if we got bogged down in Cuba.  I don't know how likely that is.  Kind of a long shot actually, I suspect.  Cuba has a pretty good army that would really fight, but we could gain air superiority quickly and then we would have a very long coastline to choose from and plenty of potential to cut their forces in two.
 

In the personal life:

 
Alice (my mother-in-law) is still limping around.  Jackie is 5 and a half months or so old now and has two teeth.  She has something new in her bag of tricks just about every day. She has discovered her toes and how to stick out her tongue in the last two or three days.  She can now use a walker to get around the living room routinely, and is obviously curious about everything—trying to get into packages, trying to open the bathroom door, trying to get to the stuffed animals.  She is starting to coo more now.  She isn't quite as far along on sitting up as I expected her to be, but that isn't too surprising given my lower back lack of muscle.

 This morning I went in to look at her when I woke up.  She was awake and moving around and she smiled up at me.  She has a smile that would melt the heart of a serial killer.  She has a trick of raising her legs straight up, then rolling to one side or the other.  She can't crawl yet, but her rolling makes her mobile enough that we can't leave her in the bed alone anymore.