Friday, February 20, 2009

blue, continued


As you can see from the photo, at six weeks, Cole's eyes are more or less the same indeterminate grey-blue he was born with. In theory, they could stay this color, but I'd guess they're more likely to end up green, hazel or brown.

What color are your eyes and/or your children's eyes? At what age did they reach their permanent color?

Oh, and here's a cool calculator where you plug in the eye colors of your partner, parents and siblings and it gives you your own genotype as well as the odds on your theoretical baby's eye color.


eta: and while we're on the subject of blue jeans (I crack myself up), please stop by Antigone's place and give her a recommendation on what kind to buy so she doesn't end up with the universally-mocked "mom jeans" (though I've never been exactly sure what they are anyway...)

49 comments:

LawMommy said...

My husband and I both have green eyes, as do all four of our parents. My son's are a deep, deep chocolate brown. This calculator says this outcome is not possible...so I'm kind of disturbed. I swear, unless Mulder&Scully are involved, my son is my husband's child. (And he looks just like a mini-him, save for the eye color.)

My daughter's eyes are so brown they are almost black, but of course I have no genetic boasting rights to what made them so gorgeous.

Anonymous said...

All three of mine started with these steel blue-grey eyes and ended up with brown. Not deep, deep brown like my husband, but a kind of greenish brown that changes color depending on what colorshirt they are wearing. Is that hazel? I've never been entirely sure. The babyis 7 months and his have already changed.

Your little guy is adorable!!!

LadyofAvalon56 said...

With the Wondertwins, the Girl's eyes changed to a warm chocolate brown fairly quickly...seems to me that by three months or so, they were pretty much there. The Boy's eyes were (and are) a very grey blue.

Jack's eyes are very blue at the moment and I suspect that they will stay that way as both Mark and I have blue eyes (albeit mine are more grey and Mark's are more green).

The Nanny said...

Wow--he looks so much older than then when I saw him! He is positively gorgeous.

And no babies for me yet, but mine are blue and they always have been.

The Nanny said...

Okay, so this is what I get for commenting before I've had coffee.

Delete the "then" in the first sentence, and in the third sentence, my EYES are blue, not my (future) babies.

Coffee now please?

christina(apronstrings) said...

cate can only have blue or green/hazel. because we only have b/g. no brown.
when we were preparing for a donor cycle...we said that we really didn't any physical preferences for the donor. the doctor insisted that we get only a b/g donor so that our potential child would be outed in science class. green is only a derivative of blue.
when cate we younger-she had the most interesting color of lilac. i wish, wish i would have gotten a picture.
by the way, your little one has such a gerber-but interesting- look about him. he looks like he is going to get into mischief. though, i've always thought that about little ones with freckles.

Tash said...

I have blue, Mr. has brown, and so we assumed brown. Bella was born with ridiculously bright blue eyes that we assumed would change. They never did. They're the color of a sky in a cartoon.

I've always wondered what color eyes Maddy would've had. I assume brown.

niobe said...

Law Mommy: I think the calculator uses a vastly oversimplified two-gene model that doesn't account for all the myriad variations in eye color. Or something like that...

Christina: How cool to have lilac eyes. (and not only does C have what look like the start of freckles, his hair is developing a kind of reddish tinge).

Anonymous said...

Oh my god, what a beautiful baby.

My eyes are blue, my husband's are brown. My daughter's are the same brown as my husband's and they turned dark very early, like within the first two weeks. My son has hazel eyes and his settled down within a month or two.

Mayberry said...

He is just gorgeous and so are your pictures of him.

I have blue eyes and so do my kids. My husbands are greenish-blue -- they change depending on what he's wearing. I am surprised that his Slovak genes totally trumped his Italian ones.

S said...

Oh my word, is that the sweater I sent? Feeling verklempt now.

He is so beautiful that my baby-making equipment (what remains of it) aches.

When are you bringing him my way?

Oh, eyes. Right.

I have strange, almost amber eyes. Hazel with a lot of yellow in them. My hubby's eyes are a blue like Cole's. The boys got hubby's eyes. That's more than fine by me.

charmedgirl said...

husband has blue, i have brown. all three have hazel, but two started out, for about the whole first year, with sparkling sky-blue eyes. the other one had a more green color. now the two with blue have a darker hazel than the one who started out with green.

i'm italian and spanish. i never knew such crazy things happened with eye color.

Anonymous said...

Mom is green, Dad is blue, I have blue-green (they change with what I'm wearing...one of my favorite things about myself), Brother has green and Little Brother has hazel.

Clarabella said...

Ok, my eyes are gray blue (more blue), my partner's eyes are blue/blue (like Cole's sweater). Surprise, our son has had blue/blue eyes since he was born. They're very light and clear. But mine were like that when I was a baby and have gotten darker over the years. (My parents' eyes are brown and hazel, respectively. His parents' are both blue/blue.)

Clarabella said...

By the way, that Cole is ADORABLE!

Amelie said...

He's so cute.
My eyes are blue-grey-green, depending on the day or what I wear or something. My mom's were brown, my dad's are similar to mine.

Maggie said...

I am DROOLING over that baby of yours -- oh my heavens, he is GORGEOUS!

My mother and sister have green eyes, my dad and my sister have eyes that dark brown. And me? As green as an emerald.

Go figure.

Magpie said...

Mine are blue, my husband's are green, the girl child's eyes are blue.

What color are your eyes?

Sarah said...

my husband has chocolate brown and i have hazel. piper's are still blue but at her age (16 mos) so we're mine. my sister's didn't turn their greenish-gray color until she was about five.

painted maypole said...

oh how I wish that I had had a better camera and taken better pictures when MQ was a baby

Monica H said...

Mine are green. My husband's are brown.

Not sure what else I'm supposed to say.

Caro said...

Mine are blue and husband's are grey/green change with the light. Baby T's are, so far, blue like mine.

Betty M said...

Me dark brown, Mr M pale blue, daughter started blue went dark brown by 3 months, son dark blue round the outside, then lighter blue and finally hazel in the middle (odd but beautiful in my view.)

Aunt Becky said...

I can't tell yet, but I'm thinking all of my kids will have brown eyes, like moi. And Cole? IS FLIPPING AWESOME. What a sweet little boy he is, Niobe.

Anonymous said...

I have green eyes (as do all of my siblings, and their children -- the exact same, dark green); my first-to-live child had the most glorious, pure, charcoal gray eyes until he was 3.5yrs. Seemingly overnight they changed to the family green. My living daughter's eyes are green and became so by the time she was about four months old. The littlest guy has clear blue eyes (and strawberry-blond hair, and lots of freckles). I figured from the start that his eyes would stay blue due to his coloring -- which was a silly thing to think because I am a redhead and I don't have blue eyes ... ! (mommy-brain)

Rachel said...

Your son is beautiful.

I have hazel eyes and my husband has blue eyes. Our children's eye color will be determined by the genetics of their birth parents.

Anonymous said...

Hubby has brown eyes and mine are blue. Both of our kids were born with and kept blue eyes. I was certain that they would have dark eyes and hair, like him, but they both came out with blonde hair and blue eyes. Their hair might turn brown though because mine started out almost white blonde and is now almost brownish and theirs is already a more dirty blonde, with hints of red.
Cole is beautiful!

moplans said...

My babies are half chinese so they started out with brown eyes that stayed that way.
I guess only caucasian babies start out with blue eyes.

Anonymous said...

My midwife said that their eyes will stay blue if they are blue at 21 weeks. I have blue eyes, Mr. MC has brown, but his grandmother had blue eyes, so he had a recessive gene. We were pretty sure the Russian/Jewish genes were going to overpower my WASPy ones, but Baby S looks really nothing like Mr. MC's family.

Anonymous said...

My midwife said that their eyes will stay blue if they are blue at 21 weeks. I have blue eyes, Mr. MC has brown, but his grandmother had blue eyes, so he had a recessive gene. We were pretty sure the Russian/Jewish genes were going to overpower my WASPy ones, but Baby S looks really nothing like Mr. MC's family.

Anonymous said...

What makes the picture so lovely, aside from the perfect model, is the smudge of milk on his upper lip.

Julia said...

Mine are brown, JD's are gray/green/hints of blue, change with clothing/light. Monkey's are the craziest mix of the two-- mine closer to the iris, his-- on the outside. She started out standard issue baby steel blue, and didn't really turn until around one. I looked at A's and he had that same steel blue, so no help there. The Cub was born with this clear sky blue, and I was wondering if he would get to keep that color. But lately I am seeing tinges of the brown palette creep in a bit. I wonder where he will end up.

Clementine said...

He is just perfect! If you get a sec, I'd love your address so that I might send you a little gift for him.

B's Mom said...

That eye color calculator is really cool, but I can't use it. Both my parents have blue eyes, but I have green. It tells me that is impossible. Maybe someone isn't telling me something...

Anyway, my nephews eyes were blue until he was about 1 1/2 years old. Then they turned a hazel/brown. My son was born with gray-blue eyes, but they ended up a chocolate brown when he was just a month or so old.

niobe said...

Lisa B: Interesting. My brother's daughter is also half chinese, but, as a newborn and until she was two or three months old, her eyes were a greenish-hazel.

Now, at the age of three, she has brown eyes, but with a kind of golden tinge around the pupils.

Anonymous said...

Cole is very handsome! My husband and I both have blue eyes, his dark and mine light. He has dark hair and I am blonde. I thought our children would have dark hair but all three boys are blonde so far. With the genetically requisite blue eyes of varying shades of darkness, faded denim to almost royal blue. They all got their dad's ridiculously long dark eyelashes, lucky boys!

-e

Anonymous said...

Did you see that DNA study that says all blue-eyed people descended from one mutant blue-eyed person? brown eyes are the norm and blue eyes are a genetic mutation. Ah, my little family of mutants!

-e

niobe said...

I'd love to see that link. If you find it, please, please send it along. Though (not to think about it too much), since blue eyes are recessive wouldn't that also imply an awful lot of inbreeding?

Uh, now that I re-read that, I guess that sounds like I'm trying to imply that you have a family of inbred mutants. Niobe inserts foot in mouth once again.

Anonymous said...

I can't absolutely deny that we are mutants...

-e

Amelia Sprout said...

My husband has green eyes, I have dark brown. M's eyes have always been extremely dark, first a muddy color, then eventually they turned brown like mine. I can't remember when, because it was a subtle change.

I wanted her to have green eyes, but her dad likes the brown.

docgrumbles said...

Is bloodshot an eye color? Oh, I guess not.

My little 4.5 week-old still has those alien bright blue baby eyes. D and I keep debating which way they'll go - he has light blue/gray eyes and I have green-brown hazel eyes. It is like a spectator sport waiting for them to change.

Nyx said...

According to the calculator my very blue eyed husband and my olive green eyes should produce 7 green eyed children and one blue eyed. UMMM I have 3 children, the oldest has my grandmother's watery blue eyes, twin one has a cross between the watery blue and hubby's blue and twin 2 has deep almost violet blue. I am not complaining I love blue eyes. The calculator doesn't take into account the fact that I have a single green allele and 3 blue, thus the 7 out of eight being blue.

OneTiredEma said...

I have hazel eyes (they look brown from afar but up close have quite a bit of green). My husband has blue eyes.

My daughter's eyes were blue for a long time (past her first bday), we thought that was it, but now they are hazel. But look greener than mine because she is very fair and has coppery hair.

My son's eyes are blue, but a different shade than my husband's.

Unknown said...

I can't get over how beautiful his skin is, like china. The substance, not the country.

Sarah said...

First, he's beautiful. Absolutely stunning. Truly. Good job :)

Second, my Sadie's eyes have been a weird gray/blue/green/brown/hazel/purple and I swear at times taupe. She's almost 6 months now and I still haven't a clue.

Lori said...

Late to this- But I had to jump in and remind you that Pumpkin has two different color eyes- so you can hold out hope for something really different! She has one brown and one green, but up until she was about a year old she had very dark brown eye and one very blue eye. It was something!

Big J has brown, Little T has green (slowly changed from brown to green over the years), and Pumpkin has one of each! How's that for symmetry?

Motel Manager said...

Mine are hazel, I guess -- green rimmed by brown. My brother has the same basic color, but his are greener. My mother has brown eyes; my father has blue eyes.

My husband has flat gray/blue eyes (vs clear blue) with tiny brown flecks near the pupil. My first son's are the same. I felt confident early on (maybe 6 weeks?) that they were "real" blue eyes. This may just be because my husband has blue eyes and so do both of his parents, and my father does as well.

Motel Manager said...

I just did the calculator, and I wasn't sure how hazel factors in. I counted myself as green, but I'm not sure that's really accurate. I never see 'hazel' represented in these genetic games.

Deshaine said...

my eyes are decidedly hazel, the brown/green hazel (mother = blue, father = dark brown).

my husbands eyes are light brown. (father = blue, mother = dark brown)

Our child = blue eyes. And I'm in love.