neutrumque et utrumque videntur

J has a theory that Owen does not look like James.

"He looks like James from the nose down" she says. "But from the eyes up he looks totally different."

She also says that James looks more like a Smith baby, and that Owen doesn't have some of the Smith characteristics.

I usually keep my theory to myself. I think all babies look pretty much the same, at least when they're really little. Even when I go down to the toddler room at the church nursery I usually have to call James' name to see which of the little brown haired boys is mine. (This is not helpful. All the little boys come running no matter who is at the door.)

It's hard to describe facial features. In Jane Eyre, for example, Mr. Rochester is "stern-featured, heavy-browed, and craggy-faced." If I had to describe Owen, I think I would call him "spit-up chinned, slightly scowling." James, on the other hand, would be a "a good little monkey" who is also "very curious."

Of course, I think that both of my boys are handsome and exceptionally intelligent-looking. They do have sort of similar looking heads, and their noses are pretty similar. (J says that James has lost his baby nose, and I'm not quite sure what that means either. James is a pretty narrow child. He goes straight up and down, while Owen is a little more roly-poly at this point. Their toes are maybe the most similar part about them, but we hardly ever see James' toes.

He needs to have socks on his feet at all times. They are the first thing he asks for when he's out of the bath, and they're the last thing to go off before he gets in. I'm not sure I've seen him with his socks off voluntarily in over a year. He lost out on several swimming and sandal opportunities over the summer because he wouldn't lose his socks. Owen, on the other hand, has trouble keeping his socks on. His knees and legs are still knotty little sticks that spasm involuntarily, and more often than not he's brushed his feet together in such a way that one sock is gone since the last person checked. As is so often the case later in life, he has a drawerful of single socks whose partners have been lost forever.

Fortunately, it was a very socky Christmas. The boys may or may not look alike now, but at least it's still easy to tell whose socks are whose.