Babies... Monkeys? Raisins? Or just plain ugly?

Of course, the title of this entry is silly. Babies don't look like monkeys or raisins or are just plain ugly. Truth is you can't choose one from the list. In reality, they are a combination of all three at once. I know it sounds a little harsh to hear that said... or in this case, see that typed. But I have to hold my ground here. For those who say babies are absolutely adorable, they are right - but only so far as monkeys are adorable, giant raisins that can move are adorable, and that this thing is adorable. Whatever that thing was supposed to turn out to be in life, it doesn't matter, because it does have a certain cute-factor to it.

But back to babies.

Some of us have been around newborn babies recently. Some of us haven't seen a newborn baby in real life probably in many years. Like when our younger brothers or sisters were born. And for most of anyone who decides to read this, that's probably 16 - 20 years ago. For those of us who have seen newborn babies recently, and have seen them grow to be about 3 or 4 months old, I'm sure you can understand my point if you take a purely objective point of view towards the little rascal. Look at how the fat on their arms and legs forms rolls all up and down their appendages. It looks like the Michelin Man. But the Michelin Man is cute, right? Right. He's cute because technically he's a cartoon, brought to life just like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were in their movies in the early 1990s. He's not real. If you saw a life size non-baby person with rolls like that up and down their body, you would be somewhat repulsed, no? Think carefully before you answer... The first thing that pops into my head here is not "cute".

We must be hardwired to find baby fat and monkey like appearance to be cute. Now, I briefly looked for an example of babies looking like monkeys from the plethora of images on the information super highway. I couldn't find one that adequately showed the comparison. I did see some pictures earlier today though. I just took a job doing in home photography for a photo company out here. We take pictures of kids aged 4 months to 6 years. Sometimes with the mama, sometimes without. We travel to their homes, set up everything, take the photos, and go on to the next assignment. Now, despite my notions that newborns up to about a year old share these oddly charming yet ultimately ugly characteristics, I found these giant moving raisins to have an overwhelming warming effect over my innards. They were terribly, terribly cute. And I was really happy I was able to take pictures of them at this, the most awkward looking period of their life, second to none, not even 7th grade.

But again. The monkey like quality in humans diminishes in cuteness as the monkey looking thing gets older, as I'm sure many of us have seen at some point on the web. For those of us that haven't seen examples, here's a cheap shot example, but very well illustrated nevertheless...

Truth is, I love babies up until about 3 years old when they start catching on that their cuteness still lets them get away with things they shouldn't. Then I don't like them until they are 24 and have a job. I'm just kidding. They should be closer to 30.

My baby cousin Sean just turned 1 year old in April, and it's been awesome to see him grow to this point. When he was only a few months old, I would take many pictures of him at family gatherings, or just when I went over to visit, and he reminded me of cartoon characters because of all the shapes he could contort his face into. I think he most resembled Popeye. See picture for reference.



I think I've gone on long enough about babies. Originally I was going to write about something more serious, about something I had heard on the news today that pissed me off a good bit at first, but I mulled it over in my head, and decided to instead just laugh to myself, debate myself about the issue, then forget the details I had just committed to memory to make room for something more uplifting.

Like babies.