When Your Kids Discover Photo Booth While You're Not Looking

I have a new computer.  I received it as a consolation prize for turning forty.  My family is not supposed to use it because they know I did my time sharing a keyboard with grubby, nasty, little-kid fingers.  They are aware of their unsanitary affliction and usually respect my computer.

However.

This morning, I left my laptop sitting on the couch while I went to sort laundry.  While I was sorting, a good song came on my iPod, and what followed was reminiscent of the "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" series.  I danced, and while looking in the mirror, realized I should tweeze my eyebrows, which led to trying some new eye shadow tricks which led to me organizing my makeup drawer- and the only reason I'm telling you this is so that the record reflects I was gone a while. 

When I came back to my laptop, it was open to Photo Booth.  

And there was this:

 

And then this:

 Followed by a few selfies:

Hmmm.  

Then J must've got bored and left, because the next few were of just the girls.

"Hey!  What does this button do?"

"Oh, cool! Contortions!"

"La,la,la.  Friendsies."

And then they discovered the frog lens.

They really liked this effect. 

They even made a video.

Movie on 11-24-14 at 7.51 AM from Tacy Cauthron on Vimeo.

The above is proof that Matt+ Me= Doubly Weird Kids

They weren't done yet.

Chipmunk cheeks

One more video.  I think what I like about this, besides PG being a goof, is the way Roo giggles through it. 

Movie on 11-24-14 at 7.55 AM from Tacy Cauthron on Vimeo.

Yep.  Weird kids for sure.

After that, PG must've left because this was the last pic on the photo booth reel:

"Quick! Mom's coming!"

Sticky keyboard aside, I don't think I can get mad at them for this.... do you? 

Short Shorts

To Mothers of Daughters Everywhere:

One day, maybe on a weekday evening, you will be sitting in a fold-up chair at the park during sunset, watching your ten year old daughter’s soccer practice.  You will be watching her run and kick amongst your friends, and suddenly you will wonder to yourself, “When did her legs get so long?” And then your next thought will be “Or… is it that her shorts are too short?”

Closer scrutiny will reveal that it is a bit of both, actually.  You’ll realize that she’s wearing the same practice shorts that had brushed the top of her knees last year.  Last summer she grew three shoe sizes and four inches taller, but her waist remained the same size.  

You’ll pause in reverence for the feats performed by a young metabolism. 

The momentary awe will dissipate quickly however, and be replaced by slight dread.  You’ll sigh, because the time has come.  You have to have “the modesty talk” with her. 

The bad thing about the modesty talk is not the bottom line (no pun intended).  The bottom line is easy.  Don’t wear revealing clothes.  Don’t show so much skin. Cover up.  In other words, your shorts need to be longer. 

See? That’s all. Easy.  What is difficult is everything that is not said.

Don’t wear revealing clothes, because boys will look. (Wait. She’s not wearing her shorts so that boys will look. You have to imply that boys will look? She’s not there yet, but you have to make her go there?)

Don’t show so much skin, because people will make assumptions about you. (But you’ve always taught her that what other people think of her isn’t as important as what she thinks of herself.)

Cover up, because men are visual creatures and you want to make sure they don’t get the wrong idea. (This one rankles the most- the idea that it falls on a girl to make sure that boys don’t think of her “in the wrong way”… but not too much so, right?  We still want to want to catch their attention, just not too much attention.  Nice tightrope we’re on.)

The truth is, you don’t care if she wears shorts that are considered too short.  She has long, beautiful, strong legs.  If you had her legs, you’d be wearing short-shorts on ALL the days. You would be celebrating those legs; running with them, jumping with them, do crazy yoga poses with them and thinking the whole time "Man, I LOVE these leg!"  And you know that when she wears shorts, she is not trying to be alluring.  She wears them with t-shirts and converse. She’s not trying to make anyone look…she’s just being her ten year old self. 

However.  

You still go ahead and talk with her.  Not because you think it’s important, but because the rest of the society thinks it is important. You've heard moms talk in disproving whispers about the ways they see the middle-school girls dress.  They describe them as slutty.  Middle school is next year for your girl.  You don’t want anyone to think she’s a slut based on her clothing choices. 

Nor do you want boys- or worse- older boys approaching her and putting her in any kind of situation that she doesn’t know how to handle.  

You don’t want pervy old men to look at her.  

You don’t want pervy young men to look at her.

Then you wonder how much of this you’re putting on her yourself.  Are you overthinking this? Are these all of your hang ups that you’re projecting onto her? You try to think….no, you were her age when the mechanics at the auto body shop on the corner starting cat-calling to you.  Song lyrics from today’s popular music still objectify women.  The Disney stars that are on many of the shows she watches are dressed like their twenty instead of twelve.  It’s pretty clear that girls are still prey to the world around them.   

Also, you realize that you don’t have control over much of this.   The world has sexualized your daughter, and she’s not aware of it, or even knows what that is.  

But you do have control over the short-shorts.

So you go to Target to buy longer shorts.  Neither of you are happy.  In the dressing room, she turns up the attitude to full adolescent volume.  “These are the ones I hate the least.”, she sasses, opening the door to show you the third pair she’s tried on.  You snap back at her.  The ride home together is silent.  She’s stares out the window, full of resentment.  You stare ahead, full of equal resentment, and you realize that you are both angry because you’re being forced to do something that doesn’t sit right with you. 

You think about how confused your own adolescence left you.  You realize that you’ve spent many of your adult years untangling the misconceptions about being a girl that were constructed while you were a teenager.  That was a lot of BS to sift through, and some of it you are still working on.   Yet- even as you’re still struggling with this pile of crap- you’ve still turned around and spoon fed it right back to your daughter.  

And you don’t know how to stop it.

What are your thoughts? 

*Disclaimer- Okay, guys.  This post isn't just about short-shorts, (in case some of you of thinking of commenting that your daughter wears short-shorts and you are okay with it.  Short shorts are in style, and I'm okay with it too, although the school dress code says otherwise).  What I'm trying to convey here is that fact that girls do have to deal with a lot of stigmas, many that are based on their appearance.  I'm having a hard time navigating around it.  How do you address this topic with your kids? 

Soccer Mom

*So, the blog format.  It's not permanent.  Remember when I told you that I was going to "conquer my beast" and try to expand this blog and/or write a book? Part of that is changing my blog design, which means doing all kinds of tech-y things that I don't really understand but am trying to learn. In doing all this, I accidentally uploaded this template to my blog instead of to a test blog, and my old template has disappeared, (because the Internet and all computers evidently hate me). So this is temporary, and by temporary I mean indefinite because I am slow with change.  And really, if you've been a reader for any amount of time, you should know that by now and not be surprised by it. Thanks for putting up with me.  Now, here's my post:

Somehow, I've become a soccer mom.  I can bristle against the label, but I'm afraid there is just too much evidence to sustain doubt: the crate full of cleats and shin guards that is kept by the door, the fact that we are at the soccer park five out of seven days of the week.... the minivan.

Ugh.  Short story about the minivan:

The night after Matt and I were married, we met up with some of his friends at a bar in Tahoe. I distinctly remember having a conversation with Matt's best friend's wife about minivans.  She and I both swore that we'd never drive one.  We told our young husbands that we would sooner drive a station wagon than a minivan.  As far as I know she's kept her word, but I caved way back in '09.  I think most moms who are carting around three kids under the age of five will hastily adjust their principals of what constitutes "cool" transportation....especially if you lure them with the promise of an automatic sliding door.  I did, at least. And I don't even really feel bad about it.  I like my minivan.

There. I said it.

Anyway, now that I'm a soccer mom, I've been paying a lot of attention to how other parents are involved in their children's sports lives. At one of G's games a few years ago, there was a mom from the opposing team whom I'll never forget.  She wasn't a coach, but she spent the whole game stomping up and down the sidelines in her strapless sundress shouting at the kids.  At one point, our girls were up by a goal and-I kid you not- she screamed "Crrrruuuushhhhhh them!" to her team.    She sounded all guttural and vicious- like the Braveheart of soccer moms, if Braveheart was totally batshit.

I try not to be like her, but I am pretty loud.  I never criticize or yell mean things, but I do get pretty involved in the games.  I tend to shout things like "That's you, G! Thats your ball, baby! GO!"  or "Don't let them take it!  Get it out of there! Hustle, girls! Hustle!"

So, basically, I embarrass my kids to no end, but I'm never mean or critical (except for once and a while under my breath).  However, there are times when I don't handle the pressure well.  One of these times was at J's first game.  His coaches had put him in as goalie, which is like, the worst thing they could have done to me.  Yes, you read that right.  Me.  It was the worst thing they could have done to me.

You may be saying to yourself, "But, this isn't about her." and you would be right.  It was not all about me, but I forgot that.  I made it all about me, and this is what happened:

The ball got past our defense, and J was left to face off against a few players on the other team.  The ball was in the goal box, and J wasn't picking it up.  I don't know why- I don't think he knew that he could.  The other players were moving in to make their goal.  I was shouting, everyone was shouting,  "Get it!  Pick it up!" It was only a few seconds, but things were going in slow motion.  The noise level got louder and louder, and then.... I just couldn't handle it.  I dropped my head and covered my eyes.  I didn't want to watch him miss it.

They took their shot..... and he did miss it.  The other team scored.  And when I uncovered my eyes, he was looking at me.

"It's okay!" I told him.  But I felt terrible.  I hated that he saw me covering my eyes. Moms are supposed to be there-win or lose- and there I was closing my eyes because I couldn't take the pressure and didn't want to see him fail. I worried that he thought I was ashamed of him, but fortunately for me, J isn't one to analyze his feelings much, so we were okay for the rest of the day.   I promised myself that from then on, I would always keep my eyes open and watch.

The next few games he was put back in the goalie box again.  I got better.  I watched.  Although my attitude about it didn't change much, judging from this text I sent to Matt.

Still making it about me, and reveling in parental revenge  at the same time.  Meanwhile, my husband is the voice of reason, as always.

J started getting better at goalie, and pretty soon, it was exciting to watch him play. I got better at keeping my stress level off of my face.  One day, the ref turned around and asked if I was Jake's mom.  I said yes, and he said "He's doing great!  He looks so small out there, but he's really not afraid of the ball.  It's impressive!"  I beamed.

On the way home from the game (in the soccer mom minivan), I asked Jake if he had fun.  He said yes.  I told him that I get nervous for him when he's goalie.  He asked me why.  And I said, "Because I'm afraid that you're not going to be able to block the ball."  And he said "It's just a game, mom."

Schooled by the eight year old.

I mean, I've always known that it was "just a game".  But honestly, I don't know what happens to me when I step onto that soccer field.  I get carried away.  I want my kids to perform and be aggressive and win,win,win! Some people say that parents relive their childhood vicariously through their children's sports, but I never even played sports.  Seriously, my sport was reading, and lets face it, there's no getting all worked up and crazy about that (although, I admit that if there ever was a competitive reading team, I'd join it because that is one sport I would dominate the crap out of).

I thought about J's positive attitude towards his playing, and I tried to reconcile the way I felt with the way he feels: I feel pressure for him as goalie, he feels like he's doing a good job.  I feel stressed, he feels like he's having fun.

It's pretty clear who holds the better attitude towards all this, and it's not the first time I've learned a thing or two about perspective from J.

Youth sports isn't just an opportunity for kids to learn a sport, it's an opportunity for parents to learn how to be supportive for their child. And maybe you'll snort at what I'm about to say, but I think that J playing goalie was an act of divine intervention. I think God was like, "Girl, you have some serious practicing to do when it comes to supporting your kids, even when they're failing.  You need grace.  Let's start with soccer, since it's safe for them to fail there."

And I have been practicing.  I haven't been perfect.  My brain still wants to explode every time the ball makes it past the defensive line into J's territory.  But then I remember to breath, and watch. Sometimes I watch it fly past him into the net, and sometimes I watch him dive and make an incredible block.   Both ways, I remember J's words, coming from the back of the minivan, "It's just a game, mom."

.....and I feel so proud.