“He’s looks so much like his Daddy!”

This has been a constant refrain since Monkey was born.  It started the week he was born.  My mother-in-law brought a copy of the picture taken of Duhdee in the hospital when she came for her first visit and it took my breath away.  Monkey looked just like his dad, they could have been twins and the resemblence grows stronger every day. 

I’m sometimes asked if I am really his mother (jokingly, of course) because he looks like his father’s clone.  Duhdee takes great pride in his “Mini-me” and I can’t complain, they’re both very handsome.  Sometimes, when he was a little lump of a newborn, I felt a twinge of jealousy that when I looked at my son I didn’t see any part of me reflected in his face.  Don’t get me wrong, I think Monkey’s lucky that he got his Duhdee’s nose and OMG those eyelashes, but it made me a little sad to not be able to see at least a small part of me there.  After Monkey’s diagnosis I had a few bitter thoughts of “Great, now I know what he got from me.  My wonky gene, PERFECT!” 

But as he gets older it’s becoming more and more clear that Monkey got a little something extra from me and I am so amused.  Poor Duhdee is beside himself.  He still takes solace in the fact that Monkey looks just like him but he’s struggling with the fact the Monkey takes after me personality-wise. 

My in-laws mentioned last weekend that Duhdee hated to get dirty when he was a child.  He refused to have anything to do with their garden.  He was always washing his hands and keeping clean.  Now just look at the poor guy.  He’s got a son and wife who would be most happy on a farm with cows, pigs and chickens (especially cows!)  At the Memorial Day cook-out I realized half way through that there were only two people there with no shoes on, can you guess who they were?

Duhdee would be perfectly content, I think, to stay where we are now and I would be OK with that too but I would be SO excited to have an even larger place to dig in the dirt, climb trees and watch MY mini-me give himself dirt showers while Duhdee rolls his eyes and bemoans the fact that Monkey needs another bath. 

Until we find that perfect place though I’ll continue to cope by dragging Duhdee to agricultural fairs (cows!) and other types of farming fun.  This weekend?  Alpaca shearing!  Duhdee can’t wait, I’m sure.