You must have been a beautiful baby

Last time I was home I perused our family photo albums. My brother was a ridiculously cute baby. He looked particularly charming and amiable in this little shirt with a NASA logo on it. Astrobaby! Objectively, I was not the best looking of babies. My mother, of course, disagrees. But she'd have to. I resembled the Michelin Man, with enough spare tires to fit out a tractor-trailer and a gaping open mouth in most pictures. Slack open mouths are never attractive. If I didn't often hear the story of how my grandmother saw me in the incubator room looking around and exclaimed, "That's the most alert baby I've ever seen, she's taking everything in!" (this from a woman who had 5 children of her own), the evidence would have led me to believe I was a particularly unpromising infant.

Fortunately, by the time I hit 1 or so I got cuter. My untamed thatch of black hair had lengthened and lightened, my mouth closed into a little pout and my extraordinary amount of pudge tranformed into a reasonable amount of baby fat. I also probably stopped feeding every two hours. I had a voracious appetite. Legend has it that my brother wasn't too interested in eating right away and my mom was a bit worried, until my grandmother told her to relax and that he'd eat when he was ready. So, with child #2, my mom expected a similar disinterest. Boy was she surprised when the nurse handed me to her for the first feeding and I went right at it! We'll see if the threat of, "I hope you have a child just like you," holds true.