You never quite know how to respond when an acquaintance tells you, “Oh my, your girls are so beautiful. Well done!”

After thanking them graciously (although accepting praise for successfully passing down one’s genes still seems a little like…stealing credit. Beyond the actual making of the baby, there’s really no physical labour involved in its assembly, you know?), I am even more lost for words when they say, “They look nothing like you!”

“I’m afraid you can only see the resemblance when they cry,” is my usual polite response, eliciting, most of the time, a hearty giggle or a smile with a squeeze at the elbow perhaps to say, “Awww, you poor plain fuck”. This is my biggest weakness, the need to be agreeable even when insulted, when it is all I can do to not pummel the person a little bit. I’m a mother, after all. I have appearances to keep up.

Don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate the kind words, especially those of you who continuously inflate my ego by heaping such undeserved praise here in my blog. Honestly, I think both my girls look more like their dad, the handsome devil. Believe me, being cute and pretty are traits both girls have acquired not by my design - although I do sometimes plant these things, just to provoke gushing episodes from total strangers on the street.

Allow me to demonstrate:

(Edit: I changed the picture because this one’s even more adorable, and hence, not at all like me. If not for horrible memories of her premature entry into the world, I would doubt very much she was really my daughter!)

Like any other tired full-time mother who’s once again forgotten to soap her armpits the last time she bathed (summer), the occasional kind word is far from superfluous. So when you think about it, I have only myself to blame for bringing attention to their good looks, and hence by unavoidable comparison, to my own aesthetically-challenged non-features.

Once in a while, I thank my husband for giving me these two perfect little children. Once in a while, he tells me that really, I’m quite beautiful. I would like to believe him if I’d actually cared two shits about being a blog babe. I already have not one, but two of them (blog babes, not shits).

Yes, be prepared for extended exposure to my adorable offspring to luuuree you into my cave of wonders.

Come, my lovelies. Coooommmmme…