Look-alikes

People are forever saying that Annie looks like David.  And for a long time I couldn’t really see it.  I mean, I could see similarities but at the same time I had seen my own baby pictures enough to know that she sort of kind of looked a little like me too.  Yes, she has her daddy’s blonde hair.  Yes, she has her daddy’s blue eyes.  Yes, she has her daddy’s amazing long, perfectly curled eyelashes.  But her hair has a slightly strawberry blonde tint that his doesn’t.  And her eyes are sort of blue-gray instead of clear blue.  And, well, the eyelashes are exactly the same…bless their perfectly formed eyelash-having hearts.  The point is that I saw Annie as looking like, well,  Annie.  

David in a dress, right there.

 But now, somehow, I can see the similarities between David and Annie so much more.  But it’s as if I think David looks like Annie instead of vice-versa.  Does that make any sense?  He will look at me a certain way and I will think, “You look like Annie.”  Or he will flash this expression at me and it will be, in my mind, an “Annie face.”  Clearly, David has dibs on these things, being older and the source of the DNA in her that created them.  But for some reason, in my mind, I think of them as things he got from her.  A little weird, right?

As I type this, I realize I’m sort of talking jibberish here.  But it’s Friday and our cats woke me up meowing plaintively from the kitchen at 5:00 a.m. AGAIN, and Annie has been sick two-and-a-half days out of this week, and it’s raining outside, and I spent a stressful morning run today convincing myself that the pain in my side was not from improper breathing techniques but something far far worse, and our house is on the market which means we have to keep everything straight and clean and orderly at all times, and I just finished drafting a big proposal at work, and, did I mention it’s Friday?  So jibberish is pretty much the best I can muster right now.

All I’m saying is, I get it now people.  I get that my sweet, big eyed, chubby cheeked, tiny nosed, bow mouthed precious girl looks just exactly like her daddy.  With a little bit of my dad thrown in somehow.  And those two together make one darn cute baby girl.  In my humble opinion.

Oh, and before I sign off, a new favorite Annie trick.  She has this touch-and-feel book of animal babies that has pretty much always been a favorite.  Which means you can get about 6 pages into it before she rips it from your hands and smacks the dog with it, instead of the standard 3 pages.  Anyway, one of the pictures in the book is of a monkey and the monkey’s tummy is actual fake fur that you can touch (thus, the touch-and-feel aspect of the book).  After pointing out the monkey to her and reading the words above the picture, which stated the noise a monkey makes (“ooh ooh, ahh, ahh”)  I asked Annie, “What does a monkey say?”  To which she looked at me, grinned and drew her little mouth into a tiny circle and said “aah, aah, ooh, ooh.”  I’ve never been more proud.  And she continues to perform this trick…when she feels like it.  We are working on adding “what a cow says” to the repertoire.  Right now she makes the mouth shape of “moo” but doesn’t say it.  So be sure to check back on those developments.

Happy weekending!