The Mommy Selfie

Before kids, I don't think I really took that many selfies.  There's probably a few of Tyson and I floating around, but I can't recall any specific selfie-type photo of me or us off the top of my head.

Enter children.  And me, the self-appointed documenter of the family.  I love taking pictures of the kids. But that means I'm not in the pictures myself.  There are times I request it ("honey, take a picture of me and the kids!"), but it can seem so forced.  We get professional pictures taken a couple times a year, mostly for this very reason, but that's not super often with how fast the kids change.  Not to mention it completely ignores my presence in the everyday.

That brings us to:

The Mommy Selfie.

I've read the articles, seen the discussion online.  Us Millennials are just so dang self-absorbed! The  ever-present selfie is yet more evidence of that (*sarcasm alert*) absolutely undeniable fact!  What's our problem?!?  Can't we stop with the selfies already?  And what's with all those pictures of our food???

I think I used to agree to an extent.  But it's not like it bothered me that other people took selfies.  Even though I never personally took selfies before kids.  And really, it does seem sort of weird to me, still, if I ever take a picture of myself without anyone else in the photo.

But now that I'm a mom?  I get it.  I want these moments to be documented.  To show that I was around.  I was there.  I remember that day at the park, in our living room, while I was singing you to sleep, too.

And sometimes, maybe a lot of the time, it's not even a good photo.  But it is a moment I want to remember.  No one was around on this night that I was rocking Nolan to sleep:

But I was.  It's not a super great picture.  It's grainy.  The lighting is terrible.  I'm pretty sure I hadn't showered in a day or two.  Nothing I would ever keep or frame to put on the wall. There wasn't anything super out of the ordinary about this night.  But I remember how much I felt these overwhelming feelings of love for Nolan, and just enjoyed being with him, rocking him (Which, true confessions: rocking babies to sleep?  Not usually my mom jam.), and how even once he was asleep I just kept rocking and rocking him.  This picture reminds of that time, that night.  A night that I would probably have otherwise forgotten.

Maybe us kids do over-document a bit too much these days.  I don't know.  It's just so easy when there's always a camera of some sort (or two or three) within arms reach.  And I know my kids won't have only their memories to rely on, when they recall a moment, and wonder if I was there.

They'll have photographic evidence.