I have a lot of memories from before I could talk. They just consist of images and sensations, and of course I have no way of knowing when or what they were except by holding them up to what I later learned. Some of them were confirmed later by my parents. I guess the very earliest, if true memories, might be the ones of being in a dark, warm and cramped space playing with my own hair and fingers, without having names for any of these things. Or lying in a glass bassinet being very thirsty, in very bright light, and crying until my throat was sore (I was only in the hospital at birth, only for a couple days, and my bassinet at home was a typical basket-type one). I also remember being in my crib and looking at the bars and shadows moving across the wall, practicing talking while alone there but being afraid to use those words for the first time around my parents, and more memories of being thirsty and crying, afraid that no one would ever come back. When I started learning German, memories started coming back to me when listening to people speak English was similarly confusing, when I could only pick up on a few words and had to guess at the rest. I vaguely remember lying on the floor trying to push my head and shoulders up with great difficulty, which is something I did around 3 months, and the blanket I had at the time. I remember my great-grandmother who died when I was two making pasta on a table which I recognized years later. I remember biting the nose off my toy Snoopy when I overheard my mom worrying that I might and started me wondering if it was possible (at about 18 months). All these memories are hard to access unless I remembered them at some point in childhood and "labeled" the events in them then, since they had no labels at the time and I think I usually access memories through those labels (ones like "when I was three", "when we moved to the farmhouse", etc.) and over time they seem to get buried under more information - I remember a time when I remembered more, if that makes any sense.