Once Upon a Time ....

.... I had three children.
3.
Tres.
One less than four.

And all three were girls.

Daughter #1, our firstborn, the first grandchild on both sides of the family, our light and our joy, was 2 1/2 when her sisters were born (I will take a second here to point out that all SIX of our children were the only grandchildren on either side.  Which is why we had to keep having them.  They had NO cousins!!  Thank God my brother finally had his first child about 5-6 months after Son #3 was born.  I'm not sure how much longer we could've gone on!). Now back to our story .....
They would one day be known as Daughter #2 and Daughter #3.
They were twins.
Born on the same day, but not at the same time.  Or even nearly the same time (that story will have to wait for another time because I feel myself digressing to a whole 'nother topic right now).

After experiencing the birth of Daughter #1, I was a bit (?!) apprehensive at giving birth again.  Daughter #1 weighed 7 pounds, 8 ounces.  It took about 3 hours to push her out.  With the eventual help of forceps.
Which left Daughter #1 with a scratch on her swollen eyelid (I will refrain from going into detail about the amount of stitches I received .... inside and out, as my doctor informed me that my pelvis was almost too small to give birth.  If I hadn't have had an epidural I think I would've kicked him wherever I could and asked him why he didn't inform of that about 10 months earlier!).
Of course when it came time for the baby photographer to take pictures of this baby, our light and our joy, her right eye was swollen shut and she had both fists balled up tightly under her chin.
She looked very much like Sugar Ray Leonard.
Only not as cute.

Add that to the extreme cone head that comes from being stuck in a birth canal for 3 hours ..... and you get an infant who is less than ..... "the most beautiful newborn that ever was".  I use quotes because I don't think I've really seen any such creature .... especially in human form.  Yes, I think that C-section babies definitely have a leg up in the beauty division of newborns, but all in all I still think most of them look like 85 year old men.
Without the glasses.

Now even though Daughter #1 looked like she had gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson (only with both ears still intact) she had the most amazingly beautiful skin color.
Jim and I both had/have olive colored skin.  We both tanned/tan quite easily, both had/have dark brown eyes and hair.  And I was often mistaken for his younger sister when we visited his hometown.  Which I'm guessing caused much consternation and gossip whenever he kissed me in church.
Not that he probably ever kissed me in church, outside of our wedding .... where he had to, but small town gossips will latch on to anything for a thrill.
And we did look like we were related.
Which, of course, we were .... but only by marriage.

ANYWAY, every time someone would come to visit us at the hospital and they'd gone to the nursery first to see Daughter #1, they would invariably comment on her beautiful skin color.  And then I would ask,  "Can you believe the cone head on that kid?!"
Every person.
Every time.

After about 2 days of this (this was back in the day when insurance companies didn't have the power to kick you out of the hospital 24 hours after giving birth) Jim got a bit exasperated and asked me why I kept saying that.
I told him, "I don't want people coming into this room and feeling that they HAVE to tell us how beautiful she is, when in reality she looks like Cassius Clay after going 7 rounds in a really bad fight!"
Of course this was after the point that Cassius Clay grew a Muslim conscious, realized that war was a terrible thing and something to be dodged avoided at all costs, and re-named himself Muhammed Ali.  But I, being the first-born child that I was, was a stickler for birth names staying birth names back then.
Actually, I wasn't ... and was mostly too young to be more than fuzzy about Cassius and Muhammed, but it made me sound more like a rebel .... didn't it?

Actually, the names of the fighters/boxers really aren't important here.  The moral of the story is this:
Not ALL new mothers are under the false/all-together-ridiculous-idea that their newborn child is God's gift to send beauty to humanity.
Or maybe that was just me.

Not that she didn't turn out to be a real stunner within 2 weeks, but at least I knew what reality felt like after giving birth to her .... our light and our joy.

I was going to tell a completely different story when I started this post.
That just goes to show you what 2 glasses of wine with dinner can do to punch up your blog.
Yes two.
If it had been three I wouldn't be able to splel.  Sepll.  Spoell.
SPELL!!!

A-hem.
The end.
For now.
Happy Monday, Eeps.  Peps.  Seeps.
Dang!!  PEEPS.
:)

P.S.  Will those of you who are widowed, or grieving the loss of someone, and found my blog because of that, or read it because of that .... please email me at jeggerstx@gmail.com?  I'd like to share something with you that I hope you'll like.
Thanks.
:)