The Cost of One Baby Girl in 1964: $32

"Every child begins the world again." ~ Henry David Thoreau.

My baby sister has been sorting through things at my parents' house, and when I saw her recently at my grand-niece's birthday party, she gave me several more boxes of stuff. 

Included in the one box was the receipt for the hospital bill for the several days that my mom was in the hospital giving birth to me. I laughed to see that the total bill was $32. An inflation calculator tells me that that amount is equivalent to about $326.84 in today's dollars.

So here is a photo of that receipt, for the sake of posterity. I've also included a few photos of little me. Yes, when I was born, everyday photos were still mostly black and white.

The receipt was accompanied by numerous other documents, including letters my big sisters Barb, Marilyn, and Pat had written to my mom while she was in hospital. In one note, Barb wrote: "We wrote this letter before we knew it was a girl. You should have seen Marilyn hopping around and laughing! Patty and I are glad it is a girl. What are we going to call it?"  :-)

So I enter into the record four photos of me, along with this receipt:
*top left, me arriving home on December 6, conveniently, just in time to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer's first airing;
*bottom left, me sticking my finger in my first birthday cake (and starting a life-long love affair with ICING);
*top right, me taking my first steps in what would turn out to be a whole LIFETIME of walking, walking, walking;
*bottom right, me a few years old, standing in our family's front yard at home, head tilted, gazing into the camera with a slightly defiant tilt to my chin (a pose I use often, even now).

I know who I am. I know who I was born to. I know who raised me. I know what they believed in. These things will never leave me. They are part of who I am, now and forever.

Oh, and I only cost $32!!!! 
Think about THAT!

Our soundtrack song is Alison Krauss, with Baby Mine.