Excerpt From the vault: Originally published September 17 2010 as EGG ON YOUR FACE

It completely escapes me now what it was I originally went into the cupboard to hunt for but within moments of opening the cupboard door and moving a few things around I wished that I hadn’t. An avalanche of papers and old birthday cards and unfiled bills and all manner of things came crashing down around my feet! Urgh!

Amongst the debris I fished out a couple of old baby photo’s belonging to my husband and I. (I’ll get around to putting them in an album one day…but I have scanned them and filed them on the computer so I’m not completely useless I’ll have you know!)

As I gazed down at the pictures I couldn’t help but cast my mind back to (almost) four years ago when my mother-in-law had first dug them out for me.

Greg and I were crazy in love. We were first-time parents, and although we were exhausted and largely clueless (I realise in hindsight), we were muddling through and were madly in love with our new addition. At last we were a family!

Almost as soon as he was born we were examining him scrupulously to see which genetic features we had each given our son. Big feet – just like his dad. Big mouth – just like his mum! Over the next few months we spent blissful hours just watching him and congratulating ourselves on what a marvelous job we had done in making him – he was perfect!

Of course opinions were divided on who he looked like.

“Oh, he is just like his Dad,” my in-laws would exclaim proudly.

“He is the absolute spit of you at that age,” my family would assure me.

We decided to gather a little evidence and do some detective work of our own.

With the photo’s all assembled on the kitchen table I called my husband to come and see. We’d sort this out once and for all.

“Eeeeew,” my husband remarked as he approached the table.

“What?” I asked thinking that something was wrong.

“You were an ugly baby!” he retorted.

I didn’t marry him for his sensitivity you will probably realise!

“Huh?” I looked down at the picture of a blonde curly haired bub with gorgeous chubby-bubby rolls in brown overalls (Hey it was the 70’s…..very late 70’s mind you).

“What do you mean?” I asked trying not to sound wounded.

“Look at you!” he continued not at all aware of my bruised ego.

Pointing a finger at the photo he jibed, “you’ve got a head like a hard-boiled egg.”

“What? This one?” I asked resting my finger on the photo of the baby in a white lacy, frilly, dress looking-thing.

“Yeah,” he answered screwing up his nose.

“Yeah, I guess your right,” I told him. “Pity, that’s you!!!!”