Leif was born January 28, 1975 at the Irwin Army Community Hospital at Fort Riley, Kansas, where his father, Peter W. Garretson, was serving as a JAG officer (lawyer) in the Army. His dad was present at his birth, and had brought some amusement to the labor process by reading "I Lost Everything in the Postnatal Depression" by Irma Bombeck aloud to Jerri, Leif's mother, in the labor suite.
This photo was taken when Leif was two days old, January 30, 1975. You can see that even then, his gaze, whether firmly focused or not, was definitely looking his dad in the eye. Leif had in immensely curious and questing mind from the beginning.
Leif was big from birth. None of the rest of his family are tall people, and we thought he was going to slow down and be more or less average size like the rest of us, but it didn't happen.
Leif weighed 9 lbs. 15 oz. at birth, and was nearly 24 inches long. He dwarfed all the other babies in the hospital nursery, and everyone was teasing me about how I was supposed to raise them AFTER they were born, not before, and asking what college he was going to.
However, Leif never did "slow down" and was never average size. He was always off the growth charts, and by the time he was in junior high, he was already his 6 foot 1 inch adult height.
From the beginning, he showed an avid demand for visual and auditory stimuli and craved new things to see and hear. He did not like being put down where he couldn't see everything that was going on.
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