Lest You Idealize

We may be surrounded by the peace of nature up here on our hilltop, but sibling rivalry (sibling reality?) often shakes things up.

Those of you who keep up with us on Facebook will have to forgive my redundancy. There, the caption for this photo read, "I suppose if I were a different kind of mother I would be intervening instead of taking pictures..."

 I could blame it on being distracted by my new pocket-size camera that I can whip out at a moment's notice, but I have had this problem for longer than that. We were looking through some of the 35,000+ pictures (no, I am not exaggerating) on the external hard drive and I have quite a selection of photos of children whining, crying, arguing and fighting. These certainly don't represent the bulk of what I have- most are your usually sweet, smiling, adorable children standards. Truth be told, I find it difficult to get the camera near Eli without him putting on a huge, showy grin- a la Gilderoy Lockhart.

I do have a parenting philosophy that finds me stepping back to let the kids figure things out for themselves sometimes (and, no, when they've resorted to fisticuffs isn't usually one of those times), but I also enjoy looking back through photos and remembering the not-so-perfect moments. It is easy for me to get nostalgic about how much happier/better-behaved/easy everyone was when I look through the recorded moments of the highlights. Having a few of the not-so-shining moments- both of childhood and parenthood!- helps me keep things in perspective.

So, how about you? Have some "reality photos" to share? I'm planning to dig through the archives for some of mine- there are videos, too!