baby toes

Yesterday I wrote about babies laughing and now I'm going to write about baby toes, so it appears I have some sort of thread going. I don't. It's just coincidence.

Yesterday I took a day off and tended three of my grand-daughters while their mother had a day of re-certification as an audiologist/speech therapist. I could probably write all month about spending a day with a 5-year-old, an almost-3-year-old, and a 3-month old, but I won't. Suffice it to say that the house got a lot messier than I remember and I got a lot less done than I remember from when my own were little and filling the house. Instead I want to write about the baby's toes.

I think toes are pretty much the most unattractive part of the human body. In fact, they are a little gross to me. I don't know why I think that. I know there are some people who have beautiful feet and toes--I see them in advertisements for summer footwear. But to me most of the human population really has ugly feet, especially toes. Even with this thinking, though, I still wear sandals and flipflops in the summer and dread giving them up when cold weather arrives. I paint my toenails for such footwear. I know that at one level it draws attention, but more important for me is the fact that nail polish kind of hides, too. I love to have my feet rubbed, but can't stand to have my toes touched. And I really can't stand to touch (or mostly even look at) other people's toes. Even people I love.

So why do I think that baby toes are so cute? They really aren't. See?

They are round and stubby. They are really shapeless. They have fat lines! And big round tops that look a little like worms. But every time I held and fed that little baby girl yesterday, I couldn't stop rubbing and holding her fat feet. I thought they were so ugly they were cute. So what makes something so ugly that it becomes cute? I don't know. But today I miss those baby toes.