What a cute baby!

An exchange I had with my stepmother this past weekend made me wonder whether I am odd and whether I should have acted differently.  (Note: either could be true, and it would not be the first time.)

I should start by saying that I am usually honest to a fault.  I will admit that I have sometimes been accused of being too blunt as well.  Anyone who knows me well knows that I am not one to use false flattery or mince words.

Because I don't believe in lying, I generally will not say that a baby/child is attractive if I don't genuinely think s/he is.  I will usually find something else positive to say about the child ("Wow! He has a lot of hair for a little guy" or "Aw, look how peaceful/innocent/strong/happy she looks"), but I will not comment that I think the child is attractive if, in my view, s/he is, in fact, average or unattractive.

(BTW, clearly I am not one of those people who thinks "All babies are beautiful."  While I love the purity and innocence of babies and small children, just like adults, they are not always good-looking.  I also realize that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.")

The easier situations in which to avoid a white lie about appearance are when you are actually interacting with the child.  It is then easy to focus on his/her immediate behaviors, rather than on looks.  Every baby or small child DOES cute things, even if s/he is not particularly attractive.  It's more difficult to be diplomatic and say something nice when you are only seeing the child in a photo.

As further background, let me mention that my stepmother and I are not particularly close.  My father married her when I was already an adult.  You should also know that she and my father do not know about our IF or treatment.  (I wrote more about her and why they are not in the loop here.)

This brings me to the situation for which I am interested in others' opinions.  While with my family last weekend, my stepmother wanted to show me a recent photo of her  now-22-month-old great-granddaughter.  My stepmother was a mother at 16 and a grandmother by my age.  Her second-oldest granddaughter became a mother for the first time in August 2008.  Needless to say, the photo was not the first one I've seen of this child; every time I have seen my stepmother since her birth, she has had new photos of "R" to show me.  As likely any great-grandmother would be, she is very proud of her (so far only) great-grandchild.

My stepmother pulled up the photo on her mobile phone while we were out on a boat on the lake.  (I wish there was a way for me to post it here.)  The photo showed an average-looking toddler girl with short, curly medium-brown hair who slightly resembled her mother, tightly hugging a stuffed Elmo smushed close to her face.

I looked at the photo for a few seconds and said "Aw, looks like she really loves her Elmo, how sweet" and handed the phone back to my stepmother.  At that moment, no more was said on the matter.

Later that day, in the evening, my father was telling a story about R from when they visited her last in April.  While telling his story, my father made to get his wife's mobile phone to show me the same photo she had shown me earlier.  I told him that I had seen the photo earlier on the boat (which he did not realize because he was not in the immediate area).

At which point my stepmother (snarkily) said "Yeah, and you didn't show much interest in it either."

I replied that I had looked at the photo, commented on it, and wasn't sure what else she expected me to do.  To which she responded "You could have said what a beautiful child she is."

It was on the tip of my tongue to say "If I thought she WAS a beautiful child, I would have said so, beyotch" and "Maybe the reason I'm not more interested in your $%&^ great-grandchild is because I have been trying to have a baby of my own for two years, while your underemployed, uneducated granddaughter had no trouble popping one out at age 25."  But I held my tongue.  I have kept her and my dad in the dark about our TTC efforts for a reason, and I don't intend to change that decision now.  I also didn't want to get into an argument with her when I had to spend the rest of the weekend (and the next weekend coming up) with them.  I think that instead I just shrugged and said "OK. . ."

Bear in mind, this is a child whom I have not seen, and am unlikely to see, in person.  While I have been shown photos of her by my stepmother during each time we have seen one another since R was born in August 2008, I have never seen her face-to-face or interacted with her.  I've never seen how "cute" she is, in terms of "cute" behavior.

Let me also add, in case you might think this relevant, that I don't really have a relationship to speak of with the child's mother, my stepmother's granddaughter.  Obviously I have heard about her (and her twin sister) often over the years, but the child's mother lives in North Carolina, and I have only seen her in person once in the over 20 years that my father has been married to my stepmom.  And that single meeting was brief and several years ago, when she traveled to the state where my father and stepmother live for her cousin's graduation.  I doubt I could pick the granddaughter out of a line-up and could easily pass her on a street--if we lived near one another, which we do not--without knowing it was her.

Looking back, I wonder if I should have just lied.  If I shouldn't have just (falsely) gushed about R's cuteness in the first place when my stepmother showed me her photo.

But on the other hand, I think that I was diplomatic, while not effusive, in my comment.  I certainly did not ignore the proffered photo and spent a few seconds looking at it.

(Clearly there is a lot of history between my stepmother and me that I am not going into here.  Suffice it to say, our biggest conflict over the 20+ years she has been married to my dad is that she wants me to view her as a mother, and I don't.  Being an adult when my dad married her, with a living mother who is part of my life, I view her as my father's wife.)

So what say you?  Was I wrong not to exclaim effusively over the cuteness of R, even though I didn't think she was exceptionally cute?  Should I have just lied?

(In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that I ran this scenario past some coworkers, and opinions were mixed on whether I acted appropriately or not.)

Feel free to be honest.  What's done is done, but perhaps if a majority of people think I was wrong, I will act differently if/when I find myself in a similar situation.