My Baby Has Jowls

So, our baby is starting to put on some weight, which is good, I'm sure. I know babies are supposed to gain weight. If they didn't, then the world would be filled with people who weight under 10 pounds and houses would only be four to eight feet tall, max, and filled with adorable little dollhouse sized furniture. It just seems like she's gaining it all in her stomach and in her face to me, and that has me a bit worried. Libby swears up and down that babies are SUPPOSED to be fat. She says she's excited to see her get "all cute and pudgy." But I'm just not sure how I feel about it.

I mean, who looks good in jowls? Nixon? Mimi from Drew Carey? Who wants their kids to look like that? I'm just worried because we've only had her for two weeks. If she's put on this much cheek fat in just two weeks, by the end of August her head will be the size of a watermelon! It's very troubling.

But, here, you decide.

This was actually the second picture I took, but it shows off her jowls a bit better. She's beginning to get lip dimples!


Here's the first picture. Her first exposure to flash photography! Here, her jowls were pronounced, but I was afraid the obvious Popeye homage was too overbearing.

So there you go. Jowly. But kind of cute and adorable, right? Well, cute, adorable, and Popeyey.

I also took our first video of her tonight. Normally, I'm against video of children who can't even move under their own power yet. I mean, what can they do to endear themselves to the camera? Even jazz hands are almost out of the question. But I decided to take this because I feel rather confident that she is already trying to talk. Every once in awhile, she'll just start squeaking--and she sounds like she's experimenting with it. She's just making noise to make it, which seems a bit advanced to me (though, admittedly, Gabe only communicated through varying degrees of scream for his first year, so I might just have off-kilter expectations). Sadly, she stopped as soon as I got the camera. Nonetheless, I thought I'd share, since I'm guessing someone out there would like to see it.