mama's turn

Lindsay, November 1983

Garrett, December 2008

There's no denying that Garrett inherited my blond hair and my fair skin, but the general consensus at our house usually is that he looks much more like his dad than his mama. Even Peggy, the Chinese owner of the laundromat I use, often exclaims how much he looks like his dad -- "Except for his hair, of course," she throws in for good measure.

When we first started assigning Garrett's features out to his parents, we decided that from the nose down he was all Blake and from the nose up he was all Lindsay. Generally we still consider this to be the case, although snippets of both of us sneak into the other half on occasion. For example, the shape of Garrett's eyes come from me (well, from my family, anyway: there are moments when he looks exactly like my mom when she was little and when he's being mischievous, he gets the same gleam in his eyes that my brother, Riley, got in his eyes right before he'd get in trouble). His eye color, however, is certainly not my light blue. Instead it is identical to Blake's sister, Brittany, as we learned when we matched the two of them up over Christmas. Also, the fact that his tongue is forever dangling out is definitely a habit I passed down.

Honestly, though, as I look through my small stash of baby photos, I think Garrett looks more like his dad than he does like me. There's no doubt that I passed certain features onto my son, but, aside from that hair, I'm of the opinion that his more dominant traits (round cheeks, wide mouth, and cleft chin, to name a few) came from Blake.

Lindsay, Nov. 1983, from the nose up