Genetic Mirroring

Potamus with pigtails?

I am pre-occupied with looks, specifically the looks of my child in relation to my own and my husband’s. When Potamus was born, everyone was shocked by his blonde hair and blue eyes. At almost two his eyes have turned hazel, but he’s still blonde as the day he was born. But most people think that he looks like Boof, which is hard for me…and I think it all goes back to being adopted, and being raised in a family where my looks weren’t reflected back and nobody said “oh, she looks like great aunt millie.”

I think my son actually looks quite a bit like me. His personality is quite a bit like my own, with his little mischievous side, but his sweetness is reminiscent of stories I’ve heard about Boof as a child. Every once in awhile Potamus will give a look, make an expression, that makes me think of his dad, but for the most part, when I look at my sweet child I see myself as a baby looking back. So why am I so surprised or frustrated when people don’t notice the way he resembles me?

Bathing Suit Body

Bathing suit season is upon us. It’s a time that many women dread, as it comes unexpectedly (after a few cold spring months were they vow to do a few more crunches to get ready) and then one day it’s here. But, to be honest, bathing suit season has never really bothered me in the body-image sense. My love of being in the water, of being in a swimsuit to SWIM, that I never paid much attention to any nagging voices that might persuade me that I would not be good enough to wear that swimsuit this year.

But, as I’ve gotten older, and spent more time around women with significant body image issues, I find myself slowly analyzing my body. Post-baby, with 20lbs still lingering on an already-too-big-frame (according to the magical medical science BMI standard), it’s been a little rocky to try and think “hmm, maybe I will stay a size 18, instead of getting back to the 14/16…how would that feel?” and the fear that another baby will make me balloon even more.

But, I’ve got to be honest. The ocean calls. And my love of being in a swimsuit (I used to own 17…as I was a lifeguard and swim instructor for 5 years!) has outweighed my tiny nagging doubts about my ability to pull of a bathing suit in public. There are blogs and articles talking about mothers not being in the picture, and I think that’s selfish of mothers…get out there, get in the action, even if your slightly bigger saddle-bag thighs are out there in the picture, too. Because, to be honest, I think my 85% adventurous spirit is outweighing the 15% of nagging body fears, and nobody really gives a damn about it, but me. Right? I mean, I’ve never gotten a negative comment about “flaunting” my white fleshy legs out in public…

So here I am, soaking up the sunshine on the Oregon Coast, spending a good twenty minutes out in the water wave jumping by myself. My body felt strong, not perfect, but able to carry myself out into the water and I had the biggest smile on my face ever. And, even when I realized that I would have to walk back to the campsite in my bathing suit, sans towel (Potamus stole that towel, little bugger), I was okay. Because so what if people notice my bigger-than-normal white thighs…I mean…they need to tan sometimes, ammiright?

So, are you going to rock your bathing suit body this summer season?

National Adoption Awareness Month

It’s National Adoption Awareness Month, which is taken by many in the adoptee community, as a challenge to write every day about our experience as adoptees and our beliefs about adoption. While I can’t promise to blog every day, or blog everyday about adoption specifically, I am always an adoptee blogging. Adoption, the experience of being adopted, is who I am and clouds how I view and interact with the world. Some people try to boil my adoptedness down to the event, the legal action taken one day that made me my parent’s daughter, but being adopted is NOT just an event, it is a lifetime experience.

As a new parent, one of the things that is most often on my mind is how my son looks like me. Or how he looks like Boof. And the wondernment as he grows and changes. Because, I was 25 before I met someone who looked like me.

I was twenty five before I met someone who looked like me. And so I immediately began obsessing over features.

And here is a picture of my 1/2 sister, when I met her she was about 4 and the picture of me on the left is about 2.

Even though Potamus most often gets mistaken for a spittin’ image of Boof, he currently still has my blonde wispy curl hair and blue eyes. And there’s something about his eyes and nose shape that makes me think, in a few years, I’m going to be comparing his face a lot to my own childhood face. Even my parents say that he looks like me as a kid.

In college I used to get mistaken for a guy, and it used to bother me A LOT. But now, I can see perhaps that maybe they were seeing my father in me.

I am still trying to wrap my mind around genetics, and how little bits of me are now in my son, but it’s been helpful to be in reunion with my biological family, so that I can see a more linear progression of features.

Body Image

With my smart phone glued to my fingers, especially during nighttime nursing, I have noticed myself compulsively reading new mom forums. Some of the posts or questions I find humorous or insightful, but others I find downright annoying. I am especially annoyed by young twigs who whine about their post-partum body.

Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t really want to be 250 during my pregnancy, for even at 6’1 that felt quite heavy and WELL over what my normal heaviest was. And despite the fact that I only lost a quick 25 and am would love to weigh less because it feels so much better, overall I am not condemning my body for the metamorphosis it went through to make me a mother.

Overall, I have always seen my body as rather functional and not something to hate, so when I read breastfeeding mama’s refer to their “gumball pink” or “floppy skinny” nipples disparagingly, I get annoyed…and then actually feel sad that is their perspective. When they complain about stretch marks I wonder why, as I had a growth spurt in HS and have always loved to touch my fading stretch marks on my love handles because it is a reminder that I grew from a child into a woman. Perhaps I am a unique woman in this way, that very rarely have I had any body image issues, least of all now postpartum. Of course I am not perfect and think it would be nice to have skinner jeans or perkier breasts, but overall I feel good inside my skin. My legs are strong to carry me. My hips wide enough to birth a child. My breasts full of life-sustaining milk for Potamus. It’s all beautiful, really…