Mis-Matched

There was a moment in my pregnancy with Lizzie where my heart broke into about 100 pieces. It was that moment where as a mother you realize you had forgotten to address something that was really important. Except you didn't forget. You didn't realize which is almost 100 times worse than forgetting.

Kylie, as you may know, is my blond child. Well, she was at 8 which is when this happened. Right now she's kinda black with blond/red highlights but in the last year has had green, purple, red and blue hair. But for this story she's blond. And 8. And had been an only child for those entire 8 years.

I am not blond. I have pretty dark brown hair. Sometimes it naturally has a copper tint to it (and sometimes I just go all out and dye it red for a year). My ex-husband also had brown hair, although slightly lighter than my own.

When I was about 6 months pregnant Kylie looked at me one night and asked, innocently, "What color hair will the baby have?"

I didn't even think about it. It was an innocent question after all. I told her probably brown.

Kylie thought about it for a minute and then said, "I wont match."

I asked what she meant but the statement already resonated with me.

She explained that I had brown hair, Daddy had brown hair and the baby would have brown hair but she had blond hair. She didn't look like anyone else.

I didn't know what to say. She was right of course. She was blond and neither my husband at the time nor myself could have ever passed for blond. In the past when people had mentioned her blond hair compared to two brunette parents we had usually said something along the lines of "Her dad was blond as a baby." Which was true. Except my husband wasn't her dad. Not in the biological sense anyways.

I tried to explain to Kylie that she and the baby would look plenty alike and they both would look at LEAST like me somewhat. (Which is odd because neither of my girls look like me. My boy on the other hand.....)

I explained that the baby would have blue eyes and so did she and that people would know. They would see them as sisters.

Eventually that anxiety passed and moved onto other things. Other things like, "You and dad did it! GROSSSSSS!"

It's funny now. It's funny because last week my mother in law looked at my son and said, "He looks like his hair is turning red." And she's right. Not like TV-commercial-for-Ireland red but it's a much lighter brown than mine and certainly my black haired husband. And it's got a LOT more copper in it than mine.

Frankly we look like a hair product ad. Well, we would.

If Kylie still had blond hair.