Linette and I were talking about Clementine this morning. We were wondering if it could be that we just think shes beautiful because shes our daughter. I think I must have started the conversation as I seem to recall having read a study about that once, something about neurotransmitters in the brain going haywire at a childs birth, making parents see their offspring as beautiful, thereby cutting down on the incidents of people saying, This thing is loud and ugly, lets leave it in a tree. I mean it would make sense, right? On the face of it, why would sane people welcome something so loud and so needy into their homes? There must be some DNA trickery at work.
So, we tried to be impartial for a moment and take stock of our new daughter. We tried to be completely objective. What we determined, after a few moments of discussion, was that she unfortunately had not only inherited my beautiful, full lips, but also the enormous grey bags beneath my eyes. Then there was the issue of the fat cheeks. While its generally accepted that fat cheeks on babies are attractive, we think that Clementine might have just a tad too much. Other than that, shes perfect except for the fact that her feet are the size of submarine sandwiches. I almost forgot about that.
So, now that weve identified these flaws, were doing what any good parent would do in these times of ours. Were filling out an application for an Extreme Makeover.
Actually, this train of thought started a few months ago when I began thinking about elective cosmetic surgery and wondering how young the youngest recipient was. (The news is full of stories of teenagers getting breast jobs from their parents in exchange for getting straight As, but I was wondering if there were cases of 8 year olds getting nose jobs and things like that.) Anyway, following this thread to its logical conclusion, I was thinking that it would be funny to send in an ultrasound to the Extreme Makeover show and see what kind of response I got back. I havent done it yet, but Ive got the ultrasound pic here, pinned over my desk.
Dear Extreme Makeover, I just got my 20 week ultrasound and was shocked to see that my daughter will not have sufficiently sculpted cheekbones…
Not a bad start.
