Paternity Test

Whenever people see Jenna, and they also know Jarom, the first thing they tell me is that she looks exactly like him. Some people in the Winn family call her a little Jarom. Their look-alike-ness was also made abundantly clear when the first thing the doctor said when he delivered her was that she had Dad’s hairline. Not exactly the first thing a mom wants to hear but it proves my point. I like to think that Jenna has some of my characteristics. My eyes, my curly hair. But those are all far less prominent than the fact that she is just a girl version of Jarom. You wouldn’t think that a girl version of Jarom would be very cute, but let me tell you people, she is. She is really stinkin’ cute.
Recently I have been noticing that not only does she look like Jarom, she has SO many of his personality traits. It is bizarro. For instance…



Jarom has this weird habit of rubbing his feet together. I don’t know anyone else that does this. If he is sitting down, he is rubbing his feet on something. The carpet, a pair of socks, the person he is sitting next to (usually me), or just plain rubbing them together. It is kind of cat-like. Well, Jenna does this too. She actually started doing it when she was a baby which makes me think that somehow it is genetic. She rubs her feet together just like Jarom does. She usually does it when she is watching TV. Her little feet are always moving.
Jarom also is the absolute worst person to wake up in the mornings. He knows this, and so sets his alarm for way earlier than he wants to wake up so that he can hit the snooze button a million times. He does it this way because he likes to sleep. And even after he is awake, he prefers to just lie in bed for several minutes. This drives me crazy, because I am a one alarm kind of gal, and every time his alarm goes off, it wakes me up. And then I have to try and go back to sleep, only to be woken again up by the next alarm. Most of the time he never even hears his alarm, and I have to hit him and yell his name so he will turn it off. This is my morning every morning. I remember a story where Jarom’s mom had to throw water on him to get him out of bed. That is how bad he is. Jenna has also recently begun to be incredibly hard to wake up. Sometimes she sleeps in til 8:30, and I have to wake her up to get to my class at the gym. So I go in and turn her fan off, open her shade, and gently rub her back while I whisper her name. She will open her eyes, look at me, and roll over and close them again. So I do something and come back and do it again. She wakes up a little more, but still goes back to sleep. When I finally do get her to stay awake, she tells me she just wants to lie on Pete (her pillow pet) for a few more minutes. So the whole process takes entirely way too long. And it is just like her dad. So now I get to do it twice a day. Hooray for me!
Jenna is also just like her dad in her eating habits. Jarom’s mom has told me several times when I call her to complain about how Jenna is a lousy eater that Jarom survived several years of his life only eating peanut butter and honey sandwiches. That is not even and exaggeration. He literally ate peanut butter and honey sandwiches three meals a day for a really long time. Well, Jenna would eat cereal three meals a day if I let her. Sometimes I can only negotiate a different entrée once a day. So it is cereal twice a day, chicken nuggets the other meal. Seriously. I do make her eat some fruit purees and a vitamin just to make sure she isn’t totally malnourished. Some would say that she is just a picky two year old, and I would agree with you if I didn’t know her dad. I’m pretty sure this is genetic, too and I will never be able to get her to eat normally.



Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all of Jarom’s bad characteristics that Jenna has inherited. She is also incredibly smart. She can do all of our 24 piece puzzles by herself, she can memorize any song you sing her after hearing it a few times, and she is learning Spanish. She can say lots of things in Spanish. She knows all of her numbers, and letters, and colors, and can count things on a page (not just recite numbers in order). She also loves books. She loves when you read them to her, and she loves to read them to herself. She memorizes stories and recites them as she sees the pictures on the page. She has an incredibly long attention span and will sit and do something until it is completed. No matter how long it takes. And because Jarom is her dad, I would expect nothing less. It is just a little crazy, how much she is like him. And even if sometimes they both drive me absolutely crazy with their little quirks, I love them both very much.