Fun with facial hair

Here's one of the 3 of us, in case anyone out there doesn't know what I look like.










(I'm gonna have a little fun with my mom here...) Careful examination (more careful than anyone is otherwise likely to do) will reveal that I have a goatee rather than a complete chin-line beard. I shaved the sides off my beard the first day I was home from the hospital, on the thinking that my beard might be scratching Ellie's face. (Tina had been asking for a goatee for years, and Ellie gets on on the first day. But it does make me look more like our dreamy OB-GYN, Dr. Pastoriza, so maybe I shoulda done it sooner.)

Nobody noticed at first; Tina noticed after a little bit; her mom didn't notice for a while.

My mom never noticed. She even asked one time if I were going to shave off my beard, and said so while looking at me from the side. Heh heh. (She's gonna be a little mad at me for posting this, I think. Sorry, mom. But it's funny.) I mentioned it to my dad to let him in on the "see how long it takes Mom to notice" game...he'd had some fun after shaving his over-30-year-old moustache and watching people like his mother not noticing.

Since then, I've decided to let the sides grow back. There's a reason I don't have a goatee (besides the fact that it's not 1994 anymore), and that's because I don't want one. And it doesn't help Ellie all that much, except for the first few hours after I shave. And being a student -- well, more like "being an unkempt student" -- I don't shave every day. So a little cushion of chinstrap hair might be better for her than a field of scraggly stubble.

Now, I'm danged sure nobody really cares about any of this.