My mom says I was a pretty baby, but obviously she's biased.

I'm not sure if my mother ever called my sister cute. Me, she called Mao Tse Tung. As a result, I might have been the youngest westerner to attempt to read the Little Red Book.

I was a weird baby and born with dark brown eyes. Also, just one tuft of hair on top of my head -- the sides and back didn't really fill in until I was about a year old. But my coloring's stayed pretty constant -- only thing that's changed is that my hair went to dark red from about ages 8 to 10, then went back to brown. Never figured out how that happened, but I'd love to get that color back.

ita, your facial expression is exactly the same as the one of me on my fridge - I was aged about four and the general I Hate You And Hope You Die Glare (the family name for The Look) is firmly in place. In the picture, my father is cackling in the background.

You have a very similar expression. I'm in good company.

ita, that drabble is stunning.

Which still floors me. How the hell can you have hiccoughs, when you haven't eaten anything, like, well, EVER?

You do a lot of drinking/swallowing in the womb. Amniotic fluid is, after a certain point, mainly constantly recycled fetal urine.

I was a very pretty newborn--at least at first--on account of the non-squished c-section head. Big eyes, lots of thick, dark hair. There was probably a period shortly after birth where my looks went sharply downhill, corresponding with my placement in the bilibox. However, there exist no pictures of yellow me.

You do a lot of drinking/swallowing in the womb. Amniotic fluid is, after a certain point, mainly constantly recycled fetal urine.

No, no, I know - in theory. In practice, the gestalt of squeezing out something with the hiccoughs is almost too funny to be emotionally parsed, and as we know, I am not a creature of logic.

Plei, were you green-eyed? Jo had steely-grey eyes for the first few weeks, as it turned out, and then they turned dark green and that's where they stayed.

Plei, were you green-eyed? Jo had steely-grey eyes for the first few weeks, as it turned out, and then they turned dark green and that's where they stayed.

I don't think so. They were sort of -ish. (Blue-ish, green-ish, grey-ish.)

As I recall, my brother (who has very, very green eyes) also started out with -ish irises.

In practice, the gestalt of squeezing out something with the hiccoughs is almost too funny to be emotionally parsed, and as we know, I am not a creature of logic.

See, and I'm just so used to the notion of them hiccoughing cheerfully through the third trimester (though PTB doesn't seem to be a huge hiccougher) that I'd almost expect them to come out that way! (Besides, they look like Winston Churchill, therefore, it makes perfect sense that they act like drunk little old men on entry!)

Annabel wasn't jaundiced, but her head was so well and thoroughly smushed in passage that I swear she didn't have a forehead for the first week. I started to worry I'd birthed a reincarnation of the Taung baby.

Now of course she has a very pretty, slightly square Homo sapiens head, though she didn't get the super-high forehead that runs in my family. The main difference in our baby pictures is that her head is a square and mine was a rectangle.

(Besides, they look like Winston Churchill, therefore, it makes perfect sense that they act like drunk little old men on entry!)

If Princess TickeyBox's first words are "We will fight them on the beaches!" or "Greece is the very cradle of democracy - she must not fall!", I'm buying the movie rights.

deb, Sail, there are two pages to that Feminism essay. I didn't think to mention that, before. I don't know if you saw both. I was only able to find it, because it just came up again, in the comments of my LJ Odd Interests meme.

Ben had hiccups throughout the third trimester. He was also slightly jaundiced, but didn't need the bili lights. The doctor just told me to open the curtains and keep him in the sun. His hiccups in pregnancy were almost as funny as freaky. He looked like Winston Churchill at about 6 mos. If you gave him a book or magazine, he would pore over it, and you'd think for all the world, he was reading it--his expression was so serious, although not nearly as serious as ita's is, in that photo. When we put sunglasses on him, he looked like King Farouk (sans mustache).

ita, you weren't an ugly baby, you were powerfully cute, but oof that look. I wonder what had you so pissed off. Your yellow essay is incredible.

I wonder what had you so pissed off.

Nothing. That was pretty much how I looked all the time. Receding hairline, eyes almost swollen shit, eyebrows that took almost a year to grow in.

That wasn't sullen or a death stare. That was just normal.