Everyone says it: There's no such thing as an ugly baby. I'm sure it's the P.C. bend in the road our culture is following and don't get me wrong, I'll never say anything in front of my kids about it but...
It's a lie. There are ugly babies. I gave birth to two of them.
Before they were born, in fact during my first pregnancy, I was told frequently that I'd find my baby to be the most beautiful baby in the world. At first it held true; I cradled her in my arms and thought, "There's no possible way a more beautiful child has ever been born." It took me a few months, I'll be honest. Maybe it was the hormones dying down, but I still remember where I was, what I was doing and when the conversation happened to cause me to face the truth. It was my dad that broke the news to me; I remember we were driving home from a doctor's appointment, a follow-up to a short hospital stay. She was three months old, it was cold and drizzling just enough to get the windows wet but not so much that the wipers could do a decent job. The snow was still piled up in the parking lots even though patches of grass were starting to peek through.
I told you. I remember everything. About. That. Conversation.
"I saw that picture..." He says, with a chuckle.
"Oh, the one where she's on her belly, looking up at the camera?"
"Yeah, that one. HA! She looks like ET!"
"........"
"She looks just like a little alien with that giant head and those big eyes."
"........"
An alien. He likened my baby to an ugly, wrinkly alien.
Ok. He was right. She was pretty goofy looking. She had (and still has) those big eyes that took up half of her little face, a broad forehead and no hair to balance any of it out. Not to mention her size; her eyeballs had to have accounted for at least 1/4 of her body mass.
When I finally fully accepted this as truth, she was older and much cuter.
She was finally catching up to those eyes, though she still has aways to go. Today she's drop dead gorgeous (see earlier posts), even if I am biased, it's true. Trouble is, she knows it as well as I do...
N has been a beautiful baby from the get-go. I'm pretty sure it's a survival mechanism; if she were as strong-willed and defiant as she is AND as strange looking as A was? Well... survival of the fittest, in a less civilized culture of course, might not have tolerated such madness. When she screams like a banshee, runs away and then flashes the cheesy smile, cooing "Hi mommy!"....just how in the hell do you expect me to discipline this child?
Imagine my surprise, then, when pulling from the same two DNA pools yielded W. Today, she's madly adorable; her charm has a lot to do with it. She's quick to smile and laugh at and with anyone in her line of sight. She's a snuggler and a watcher and a giggler and an awesome sleeper. But, for a while there, before she started those social smiles and interactions, we were pretty concerned.
 |
| She looked JUST like Winston Churchill when she furrowed that brow! |
Pretty much immediately we knew she was good natured, we just didn't know how supremely amazing she'd be. It all balances out. It's ok to think they're goofy looking, it doesn't make us bad parents. It's fascinating to see them grow and change and observe their features molding every day into what their adult faces are going to be. It makes them beautiful.
I'll never tell her, or the others, my opinion on the "cutest", but I did realize something that brings me back down to Earth pretty damn quick.
The two that most resemble me... were/are the strangest looking of the three.
It really hit home the night my husband and I were discussing little W's new nickname (Winston). I remember everything about that conversation, too.
"She'll be the one with...you know...nice eyes. Such a great sense of humor!!"
He said the same things to me when we started dating.
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