I try not to notice too much, or even put much thought into it. But if I do, most of the time when I look at my oldest son Creed, I can’t see any resemblance of me in him.  “He looks just like his daddy!”… I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard that (and thought that myself!). His hair color, his eye color, the shape of his face… and all of his expressions are identical to my husband. It’s not even that he’s trying to purposefully emulate him (though he does that, too). He was just born this way.

My  younger son Traben? Well, it seems to be almost the exact opposite situation. I can hardly see his daddy in him and see a lot of me. If I look at childhood pictures of myself, I see Traben. (Though he doesn’t currently sport the wicked mullet I did.) People tend to remark on him looking like me, which admittedly I feel  bad about. Getting told you look just like your mom when you’re a boy, well… that’s gotta be upsetting. But I have to say, I like knowing that one of my children actually appears to belong to me. Perhaps it’s a selfish desire to want to see a hint of me in my children, but it’s affirming. Maybe God didn’t remove any and all of my characteristics from my kids because I’m too much of a… um, character?

Needless to say, I’ve had some happy moments lately as I’ve seen more of my own traits in Creed show themselves. Granted, he’s not suddenly looking more like me. It’s just that, as we converse and go through our days, I see something all too familiar in him… And hear it from him, too. It’s a mischievous little sparkle in his eyes that tells me what I already am sensing; he’s about to deliver a hilarious pun or something horribly sarcastic.

He seems to have been given my sense of humor.  World… consider yourself warned!

Last night I experienced a perfect example of this while he was working on his homework. Pages of it. (When did 3rd grade start sending home 10 pages of homework?!) He was cruising through his work on his own, but I could see he was about to lose focus. I asked him if I could read one of his story problems, so we could see just how quickly he could find the solution. Happily, he agreed to my plan.

I started reading, “Jan gets on the school bus at 8:15 a.m. She rides the bus for 35 minutes. At what time does Jan arrive at school?”

Creed replied as soon as I stopped speaking, knowing that he had the correct answer and would soon be praised for his great knowledge,

“Uh, that’s easy. She would arrive late!”

That’s my son.  Already thinking like me…what fun is it if you take life too seriously, anyway?