Beautiful Bee

Having a daughter is messing with my heart in all the best ways. 

Eyelashes. Enough said.

The boys have taught me how to relax, how to get messy, how to build an elephant out of legos, how to throw a football through a basketball hoop, and other such important things. And, man, I have loved having my boys. They make me feel like a queen. There is nothing like being told by an admiring little man, "Mommy, you look so nice today!" And boy snuggles get me every time. 

I'm not going to lie that I would've been totally okay with two more boys, and it kind of makes me mad when people wink knowingly and say, "Finally got your girl, huh?" like I was just waiting for a girl and now I can move on with my life because I'm complete. "Kind of" was an understatement.

To be honest, I was a little nervous about having a girl. I'm not great with pink and frills and bows. I've only recently learned to develop my feminine side. What if I scar her for life? Thankfully for Bee, most of her clothes are hand-me-downs from my niece whose mother could write the book on girly, so she's pretty well taken care of. My sister also sent a whole bag of bows and threatens me with her unmitigated wrath if she hasn't seen a de-bowed picture of Bee recently enough.

There is more bow here than baby. Seriously, I cannot see Bee for the gigantic flower eating her head.

Of course, I fell in love with Bee the second I held her and she stuck her little tongue out at me, but the thing that's been getting me lately is how incredibly beautiful she is. All my babies are beautiful (biased? who? me?), but Bee is girl-beautiful, and it's different. Don't ask me how. It just is. I sit and look at her little pink mouth and her reams of long eyelashes and her huge eyes (and yes, she's bald and currently going through the cradle cap phase), and I'm utterly convinced that she is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

Don't you tell me she's cross-eyed!

So you can imagine my surprise when we showed up at church Sunday, and my friend, Andi, greets me with, "That child is just you made over, Marian." 

What? Who? Me? This perfect, precious, beautiful baby looks like awkward, gawky me? Please, don't insult her!

She has the over the shoulder model look down like nobody's business.

And I know you think you know where this post is going. Next I'm going to tell you that I need to discover a more positive self image so that my daughter won't grow up thinking that she's ugly too. And while that's true (positive self images are not my strong suit), I actually have a different point that I want to develop here.

We like to dress up and send pictures to the Man. Just so he knows what he's missing.

Because here's what happened instead: after I got over my shock at Andi's comment (it took a few hours), I started realizing that my gorgeous baby really does look like me. She has my eyes and my mouth, my nose and my eyelashes. It even looks like she has my toes, but that's neither here nor there (do toes determine a person's beauty?). Interestingly enough, it took having a girl to have a kid that managed to break free from the Man's incredibly strong genes. And so, being the logical person that I am, I realized that if A) Bee is beautiful and B) Bee looks like me, then C) I must be beautiful too.

And you know what? That was kind of fun. So I thought I'd share.

She will be that kid who sticks out her tongue when concentrating. Wait: she got that from me, too.

PS My husband is sitting in Alabama right now, rolling his eyes and saying, "I've been telling you this for how long?" But seriously, guys, having a daughter is craziness! msf