Siblings

After LittleM was born, she was taken up to the nicu. After I came to and pressed the morphine button 41 times, they wheeled me by her box on my way to my own room on the floor. My very first thought was "shit, I guess that one's mine . . . because she looks just like her brother." Lots of other folks have made similar observations, but it wasn't until I saw these two photos (of them, each at 5 days old) on my MIL's fridge that I realised that I wasn't imagining it.




Her face is longer, her skin is darker, and she has this wary look which I interpret as "any more tubes, needles or boxes and I will smite you all"

But it's otherwise rather eerie right?

And makes for some more queer family brain food around here. We live in a small college town, and people are generally Very Accepting of us as a cute lesbian family. Acquaintances routinely inquire if the kids have the same. . . er, father? dad? sperm donor? and when we nod they invariably grin and say "oh how nice for them!" I'm never sure what to say to that. Is it nice because they share 25% of their genes? As if that makes for guaranteed good relationships. Is it because they think dealing with a single source of paternal genes is really great? Although we think that the Spuncle is pretty fabulous, random person in the park doesn't know him from a frozen dude from Georgia, so I'm not sure why it's so "nice." However, I am both not very creative, and not very funny - so I usually don't have any smart-ass answers on hand for such encounters. I usually just keep with the smiling and nodding.

In some ways, the fact that these kids look alike reinforces our little unit of 4 as somehow more legitimate. And by that I mean closer to the ideal het nuclear family. The children are obviously related and have the same surname. We get praise for this.

At the same time, the fact that these kids look alike makes our differences more explicit. They were not created from the physical union of me and my female lover. Ahem. Their physical resemblance is an announcement that our unit did or does involve more than the 4 of us, and does not fit neatly into the straight family model with the quick switcheroo of another mom for the dad.

i think that second part is more obvious to us than to strangers. Because there are now two, (and one is still little enough that we spend most of the day staring at her in the googley-eyed way folks stare at babies) their relatedness makes our queerness more present. And Queer is a nice break from feeling like a milk factory filled with dino-lore.



Also, it is fortunate that the second kid comes second. Cuz now I have the baby thing a bit more practiced, which is good, since there is an almost 4-year-old to corral as well. And I'm less anxious (most of the time) about breaking the baby, so I let him go near her. Seen above: either baby being eaten by one of several predatory prehistoric marine arthropods or baby being covered with kisses by her big brother so that "she will not be eaten up by any of the extant animals that are still living into their tummies Mum-um-um-um, because animals and monsters don't like to eat kisses"