Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Smiling Baby Syndrome















I got into a conversation with Beautiful Wife a day or so ago about pictures of Dear Alex - we have literally thousands of them to embarrass her with when she's old enough. Not that we'd ever do that mind you, but... We got to trying to pick photos for this or that, and it occurred to me that there's a certain need for people to see pictures of Baby smiling, grinning, laughing, etc. Dear Alex certainly does that, but there's also quite a range of other expressions in some of the pictures of her that point to other things - that quality of curiosity, of consideration, deep thought even - sometimes bordering on brooding. (A trait from dad to be sure) Some of my favorite pictures of lil' screamie are like that - darker, more thoughtful. I have this notion (I'm sure I'm not alone in this) that there's a reason that we don't remember baby-hood. It hurts. From everything that I've seen with our remarkably calm and well-adjusted baby (knock on wood) there are a lot of things that she would not want to remember. So, I'm all for Smiling Baby, but Serious Baby has a story to tell.

1 comment:

rechal said...

That is one beautiful insight, Pook.