In the privacy of my own home, I find my baby quite adorable. However, I know this point of view doesn’t lend itself to a lot of entertainment value or street cred on the Internet. Of course the baby is cute. Every parent thinks his or her baby is cute. Big deal.

That’s why, when possible, I so enjoy sharing unflattering pictures of the baby. Ugly baby shots are amusing because, like unflattering dog pictures, you don’t really think of babies or dogs having good angles, and it’s strangely hilarious to see bad photos of a being that would seemingly have no ego, something whose innocence you’d would think constantly would shine through.

Plus, like a lot of new parents, I experience a struggle over my internal sarcastic childfree person versus my external vomit-covered parental self. So making fun (gently, in a non-emotionally-abusive way) seems to hit a nice balance. Yes I procreated and like taking pictures of my spawn but no, I don’t take it incredibly seriously all the time.

So in my (probably misguided) attempt prove to myself that I have a sense of humor about my kid (but also because, as already established, ugly pictures of cute babies are good), here are some of Paul’s less-flattering pics.

If you have your own bad photos of cute kids, share them and we’ll round them all up in a post next week. You can do so by leaving a comment on this post — with a link to the photo as it appears on Facebook, Instagram or Flickr — or, tweet the link or photo to @zulkey with the hash tag #CuteBabyUglyPic.

Enjoy!