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| please disregard my inability to sketch baby heads. |
You may recall that TLG was not originally on board with getting a Little Brother, but that we eventually brought him around. Well he has stayed around, and he is stoked as hell about LBB. He helps me with diapers, lets me know when I need to feed Little Brother (you know- in case I hadn't noticed the grousing infant) and bestows millions of kisses upon him. For his part, LBB is still kind of indifferent to TLG, although he did smile at an appropriately-timed moment in response to TLG tickling his feet, so who knows. Strangers things, Horatio.
When we got the anatomy scan of LBB the tech switched it over to 3D, so we got to see LBB's facial features- and we were pretty shocked by how much he looked like TLG. Once he made his Exterior Debut, however, two Main Differences jumped out immediately:
1) He has his father's dark hair
2) He has his mother's cleft chin
TLG was born with sort of medium-brown hair, and it shocked exactly no one when, after he rubbed that initial fuzz off, the new growth came in golden. Blond/e babies are fairly ubiquitous in both of our families (Nathan notwithstanding), so it was more or less expected that any child of ours would follow suit. LBB is the first grandchild on either side (that's one in fourteen, mind you) to come out with truly dark hair, and we're hopeful he'll grow up to be as black-maned as his father.
As for the chin- I'll admit, I was a bit wistful when TLG showed absolutely no evidence of my ancestral chin-dimple, and in fact I spent probably way too much time staring at the aspect in question, attempting to will an indentation into existence (and possibly also poking at it in an attempt to encourage one to develop... don't judge me...) So when I first saw LBB from not a crown-down angle (visibility is limited for that immediate, skin-to-skin contact) I literally let out a little gasp of delight and squeaked, "He has my chin!"
See, the beautiful thing about TLG is that he blends our familial features so perfectly that it's really hard to consistently say, "Oh he looks like so-and-so!" More often it's a certain expression he makes that has us going, "Oh yeah, he's related to Cousin _____ for sure." But with LBB it's like he's taken specific traits that are immediately identifiable as one or the other of us, and arranged them in the best possible way.
Other differences include:
-LBB has a wider mouth (but whenever he makes a moue it looks exactly like TLG's, especially in conjunction with their identical noses)
-LBB has a wider jawline, which right now codes as a rounder face
-LBB is built on longer/narrower proportions than TLG, and in fact he may end up being a throwback to my paternal grandfather, judging by his feet
Granted it's been all of three weeks since LBB emerged, so we'll see how it all pans out. But in the meantime- genetics, man. Some crazy stuff.
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