to be getting a bit fed up with comments about how 'different' my dc3 looks?

[LetThemEatCake]

dark haired family, dc3 is randomly blonde

although not so random really as dh was also blonde until 6.

getting bored of people saying "OMG!! he's so blonde!!" But no big deal, just boring.

But twice in last week - "he doesn't look like he should be yours" from one and "are you sure he's yours?" from another. Which, stupidly, panged and rankled.

Fedupwithdeployment -- omg, you're right about Ireland. Making remarks about what family member you resemble is the national pasttime.

...although look at the nudge nudge wink wink stuff that goes on about a certain Family's spare second son in the UK....

My eyes are dark brown, my dad's were dark brown,my mum's are hazel, my dh blue/ grey and dd is blue /grey. so not quite sure where the blue gene has sneaked through from in my side of the family.

We get this too.

DH and I are both brown haired and brown eyed. DS1 has red hair and blue eyes. DS2 has brown hair and brown eyes (hurrah!). DD is blonde with greenish eyes.

Genes are funny old things.

I used to know a family of 9 - dad was Jamaican, Mum was an Irish redhead. Siblings looked like they'd been cast for a Benetton or Gap act - the full spectrum of colouring and skin tone.

My middle sister is always asked if she is part-Chinese - she is petite with very deep set dark brown eyes and delicate cheekbones. The rest of us are rangy blue eyed blondes (or mouse in my case). Unfortunately given her nose, there is no getting away we have the same father and mother.

I don't think yanbu - it does get vexing but it is just something to say. I would hate to live in a world where you can't comment on someone's looks or appearance at all. I love talking about how genes move in mysterious ways.

To whoever asked about green eyes - they are much more complicated than blue & brown, there are several different alleles that determine green. So don't go tracking down any servicemen just yet

I had this with my brother - He was blond, blue eyed I am dark haired & green/hazel eyed. We were the but of lots of playground "jokes" about us having the same parents.

Although to be honest we were equally evil to each other. My parents couldn't afford the longer Birth Certificate when he was a baby so he just had the short one - which doesn't give parents names. So I convinced him that he was adopted. (the fact that he was the only blond in our house "proved" my theory)

Now I have one blond DS and one brown haired DS. And have all the comments again! It doesn't bother me anymore and you shouldn't let it bother you.

We get this. I suspect it may get annoying after a couple of years but at the moment we are still fairly puzzled about it ourselves!
Both of us are dark haired and I am fairly dark-skinned. Our 16 month old is very, very fair, almost white-blonde in some lights, but with very dark eyes and my skin-colour. Neither of us have any blondes in the last couple of generations of our family. My family has produced exclusively red-headed men for 3 generations.
Where the blonde came from, I have no idea.

narkypuffin - as stardown says, it is a WHOLE lot more complicated than my first post would suggest. There is more than one gene controlling eye colour, and although brown = dominant, blue = recessive still holds pretty true (not entirely), it doesn't account for the fact that green is considered co-dominant (brown + green = hazel) but can disappear and then suddenly reappear. So there is no straightforward answer, sorry!

The colours, apparently, are all to do with how much melanin (the skin tanning colour) is produced in the iris of the eye - so none = blue, loads = brown and the other colours range between, probably in this order:
blue < grey < green < hazel < brown.

- almost certainly should be "there are more than one gene" - have been in Australia too long already ...

I am always told just how much my daughter looks like my sister. This usually follows "She's so pretty ........ "

Small talk is commenting on the facts - i.e. 'ooh aren't his eyes blue' etc. Anything more than that is astonishingly rude, and to make a comment out loud about someone's parentage, no matter how 'jokingly' is vile manners. Vile.

Jesus Christ, if that's all that is wrong in your life count yourself lucky. People are just finding something to say, that's all.

defineme:

You seem to be suggesting that you and your DP both have blue eyes but one of your DC has brown eyes - that is genetically impossible. I hate to have to break it to you but the kid is not your DP's.

Queenstromba - that's a hell of a leap! defineme doesn't mention having blue eyes at all, just that one child (a twin at that) has different colour eyes from the others. If they have hazel eyes anywhere, then brown coming out wouldn't be impossible.

I think people think it's bit of a joke and are not realising it will upset you. I've had that a lot with both DC's as I am quite dark and they both had very fair hair and DD actually has green eyes (DS's hair finally getting darker now).

Thumbwitch - going back to your comment yesterday of when eye colour changes, my eye colour was blue in primary school and hazel then green (by year 8) in secondary school.

I'm one of the freaks (one in each generation) in the family only my (maternal)Aunt and my now deceased (maternal)Great Aunt had green eyes, everyone else has blue or blue/grey eyes out of about 9 cousins, 15 2nd cousins, etc, etc. Now I'm the freak of my own family as DH's side is all blue or blue/grey and our DDs are all blue I can but hope one of the DDs eventually changes colour so I won't be alone.

DS2 is very blonde and my hair now is brown and his Dads is grey dark, so we do get the OMG he's so blonde. (pic on profile)

We were all blonde like him when we were little as was DS1, my hair always was quite light in the summer and its only since my mid thirties its stopped doing so

ah, truthsweet - you give me hope! It's not that I don't like blue eyes, I have no problem with them, but I prefer green (always have, wanted mine to be proper green so much) and I would like DS to have eye colour like his Dad's.

And - just to demonstrate the point that it's not as simple as it looks - this article contains a paragraph which says:
"However, the biological reality is not as simple as that because eye colour is a polygenetic genetic, it involves many different genes, some of which remain unknown to science. And each gene comes in two versions which leads to a considerable amount of variation. So for example, it is entirely possible for two blue-eyed parents to have a child with brown eyes. Although this would seem to be contra to what we were taught at school."
(my bolding)

Eye colour cannot safely be used as a determinant of parentage or non-parentage.

There goes the whole plot of Shirley Conran's Lace then.

dh,dd and me are all dark haired.both boys are blond.we get lots of comments.dh was blond until he was 12.

stupid people

thumbwitch - I wish mine were proper green too - have always wanted eyes like the ferero roche mint advert lady's eyes though I'd probably have to have been at Chernobyl when it blew to get eyes that green. Instead I have olive green eyes with a yellow corona around the pupil - not very striking when compared to the 3 DDs enormous blue eyes (they're like flipping china dolls the lots of them )

ahem - 'Ferrero Rocher' and 'lot of them'

A friend and I went to a local cafe with dd last week. We got chatting to a lady who was there with her beautiful red haired gd. Once we'd admired her lovely colouring the lady looked at me and (female) friend and said (referring to dd) 'well she's got both of your looks'.

Friend and I spent a good long time on the way home discussing how exactly this woman imagined that our child-of-two-mothers had been conceived.

I do know of some children who look like both their mothers, but this is where a relative of Woman A has donated sperm to Woman B. Likewise with two fathers - spern from Dad A and relative of Dad B has got pregnant with it. But it's quite rare.