My baby is so cute I literally cracked my tooth

...twice.

To listen to an audio recording of this letter, hit play below.

So I have this problem where I grit my teeth and scream when something is really cute. My baby is really cute. I grit my teeth and scream a lot. Don’t worry, he’s used to it. About ten years ago, I got a cap on the tooth that sits between the front tooth and the incisor. This particular tooth was a bit smaller than its twin on the other side, and it was an easy fix, so when the dentist offered it, I said, why not? To be honest, I completely forgot about it until I was sitting at my kitchen table a couple of months ago, gritting my teeth and screaming at how cute my baby was, when it cracked off. It wasn’t a clean popping off the cap, either, but left a sort of jagged, chiseled effect across the face of the tooth. It had to be fixed. I called my dentist and they got me in two days later, fixed it all up, perfect, great, thanks, bye see you later. But then, literally one week later, it happened again.

The thing is, my baby, who is really more of a toddler now, is just so cute. He’s like a squishy little adorable munchable gummy bear. That’s actually what I often call him: Gummy Bear. And let me tell you, he is the gummiest gummy bear. But I am not alone in wanting to chomp down on adorable things; it’s actually a biological phenomenon called “cute aggression,” which is something called a “dimorphous expression,” meaning, you feel one emotion, but express it using a different emotion. You are not actually feeling aggressive when you want to bite something cute. You’re just intensely overwhelmed with joy and need a place to put all of that emotion. In fact, MPR posted an article about this titled “Why do we want to bite cute things?” I learned from this article that many languages have a specific word for this feeling. They referenced the Tagalog “gigil” which is defined as: “the gritting of teeth and the urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute.” Or as this guy explains: cuteness overload. Yup, that’s it. I feel gigil all the time. Gigil is what made me lose the cap on my tooth…twice.

I find every single little tiny thing about my Gummy Bear cute. But he does have a little cherry on top of the cuteness, and that is his dimple. We could see it from the day he was born, and from the moment I saw it, I’ve been obsessed with it. There’s nothing quite so gigil-inducing as a dimple, if you ask me.

My father has a dimple. My husband does not. I have a super teeny tiny dimple that I don’t even really count. But Gummy Bear? He’s got a dimple.

The other day, I grew curious. I learned my Punnet squares back in tenth grade biology; I roughly understand the passing down of genetics, at least in a rudimentary way. But what I had no idea about was how a dimple formed. Turns out that dimples are formed during embryonic development when the zygomaticus major muscle splits. This muscle is connected to your mouth, and when it splits like this, it forms a hammock where the skin pulls between the muscle. This is what makes a dimple.

When I went back to the dentist a second time, I decided to have the dentist remove the cap, vanity be damned. I knew it would not be possible for me to stop gritting my teeth and screaming in the face of the constant cuteness overload I witness every day. Honestly, it was an easy decision. Gigil over everything, I say.

What gives you “cute aggression?” I’d love to know about all the ways I’m not the only one, though hopefully your gigil didn’t cause any chipped teeth.

With love from my kitchen table,

Kaia