our own flesh and blood

chris and i both have amazing families. we have families, who, upon seeing our boys, will drop anything and everything to spend time with our boys. our parents, our brothers, our sisters. all of them love our boys with a love that i can't even begin to describe.

and if your family is anything like my family... or like chris' family... loving on our little guys also means soaking in every bit of their little faces. their laughs. their personalities. their dimples. their chub.

which, inevitably, leads to a discussion that could be started with any of the following....

"austin is the spitting image of his father." "graham is the spitting image of his mother." "my goodness, carter is fat." "carter has rubber-band wrists and cankles... just like austin did!!" "graham reminds me of his uncle, brian." "austin reminds me of his uncle, adam." "carter is the same size as his uncle, alex!" "oh wow, carter has dimples... just like austin... and just like chris!" "oh wow, austin and carter have dimples just like their uncle adam!" "my goodness, carter looks just like austin!" "my goodness, carter looks just like graham!"

and it is. all. true.

these little offspring of ours tend to have similarities everyone can pick up on... but for reasons that are obvious, the Petrich's are ignorant to the fact that these little boys might have Hill tendencies and the Hills are ignorant to the fact that these little boys might have Petrich tendencies.

so i decided to put out some objective comparisons. there is no right or wrong answer. just funny observations.

here is chris. and austin.

here is graham. and me.

again here is graham... now next to chris' brother, brian.

then here is my brother, adam. next to austin.

here is graham at 3 months. and his little cousin savvy at 3 months.

or carter next to graham, both at 4 months.

and then there are some observations that no one can dispute.

graham got his father's sense of style.

and carter got his mother's thighs....

but what if graham and austin, who share no common DNA whatsoever from what we can tell, don't really look all that much like their mom? or their dad? and what if carter just looks like carter? what if he doesn't look or act anything like his brothers and wants to be his own big deal?

i think we'd still claim they did.

it is part of being a family. to know you share blood, genes, and DNA. we exist because of our families and our offspring exist because of us. so our way of celebrating that fact is to identify with our babies. love them. compare with them.

but like i said, none of the observations are objective and none are necessarily true. sometimes these little dudes remind us of ourselves or our siblings when they were young, but they are fleeting glimpses held by a subjective observer. what matters is that God made each of these little boys perfect in His sight. to be made as imperfectly and perfectly unique as each snowflake in the sky. all i can say is that we've been blessed with some chubby, dimpled, and cute little snowflakes.