Dear fellow instagramers

pond user ↓

Tue, Dec 12 2017, 3:52 pm

Now, before I begin my letter let me be clear that I opened my Instagram account after having my first child, in order to share with close family and friends snippets of our baby girl's adorableness. Because let's face It, which mommy doesn't think their baby is quite frankly the cutest thing to land on our planet, and is so sure that everyone else feels they are missing out?

Of course I have a Facebook account too, so I could've just posted pictures and updates right up there on my wall. But I didn't you see, because I have so many friends on Facebook who are... well, not friends. And of course I didn't want them seeing my precious baby grow up because... just because.

At first I began filtering through my 139 friends (do I even know 139 people??) to weed out the non-friends friends, if that makes sense. But with over 45 extended family members, school friends, university friends and of course friends that I know without knowing HOW I know them, it was a lengthy process.

Somehow as soon as I deleted people, (although Facebook assured me in no uncertain terms will they know they had been removed,) they requested my friendship once more. One by one. So I thought, who am I to turn down her request? After all she may have shared her snack with me back when we were 5!!! And this person gave me a ride to the event 4 years ago. And the next one... you get the picture. So I ended up with *DRUM ROLL* 139 friends! who mostly weren't friends, so I opened my Instagram account.

This time I was vigilant. If my baby was to be posted up on instagram, the people looking at her best be people who love her almost as much as I do. Now I hear you ask why I didnt just share pictures to my closest family and friends individually through, let's say email or watsapp. And I'll answer because I'm a curious person myself and I know I'd want to know (even though we all know curious is a fancy word for nosy, and nosy people should mind their own business!). So the reason for Instagram was because there were just too many people who are very close to me who wanted regular updates, many from abroad, and I'm not great with copy and paste. But not enough people for me to want to share with say, 139 non-friends on Facebook.

Back to my Instagram. Now every time my baby did something genius, for example fell asleep sitting up, or emptied an entire box of tissues (how cute is that!?), up went that picture on Instagram. And let's face it, she is a genius! And so I shared her with my closest of family and friends (all 41 to be precise).

Then I had my son and how absolutely adorable is he? And I'm not kidding. So of course my sharing platform was filled with the most delightful things in my life and my 41 followers kvelled in the sweetness, as did I. What could be cuter than my daughter hugging her baby brother? (I'm really asking because I haven't come across anything so far, and baby hedgehogs don't come close.)

Am I making sense so far? Okay, so now I hit a problem. I recently looked at all of my posts, (I didn't even know you could do that) and my life looked picture perfect. Literally. According to Instagram I had the happiest and cutest (that part isn't lying) little family that ever there was. But it was the perfectness that irked me.

Let me tell you, my life is FAR from perfect. To each 1 gorgeous 'caught in a moment' picture I have ever taken, there are hundreds of pictures of my adorable kids screaming (because I find it cute) blue murder. I'm not exaggerating. So apart from the hilarious photo of my son crying after getting trapped in the paint easel, (Yes, I'm that mom who stopped to take a picture) and the one of my daughter looking dreadfully sad because she wanted her auntie's pizza, my kids look like the most authenticly happy kids in the country.

And I just want to let you know right here right now, it isn't true. Remember that precious girl you saw tonight hugging her daddy at the menorah? She kicked me 45 minutes later because she didn't want to go to bed. And the one of my son climbing up two steps at 6 months? (I told you he was a genius) he fell down them 3 seconds after the snap. And that picture of them eating their homemade pasta with a smiling, cool, collected mommy? I had sweat dripping off the tip of my nose 5 minutes before that snap because I had run home from work to make pasta by hand because... I don't even know why I thought it was a good idea anymore. Especially since packaged pasta is just as good. Well, almost.

But I love my family throughout the amazing and challenging times and I wouldn't ever change that. So I wanted you to know, I only post the good stuff, because the challenges are sometimes unsharable and sometimes completely forgotten amongst the cuteness. Here's my cuteness fellow Instagramers.

Over and out,
Instagram mom.

allthingsblue

Thu, Dec 14 2017, 8:16 am

gande wrote:

Thank You for posting. You have an amazing writing style.
At this time of the year, I steer clear of Instagram. It depresses me. It seems like everyone has the most magical candle lighting with everyone standing at the right angle with the perfect picture in low light. I never seem to get my children and hubby to cooperate like that. I gave up on getting a decent picture. Thanks for reminding me that I didn't see the before and after....

It would be a great service to the world if popular Instagrammers would post a picture of a natural not so perfect moment.

First off, many of them do. They show "bloopers" style pics, and makeup-less pics, etc.

Second, the onus is on you to either avoid pictures that make you feel "less than" or make you feel imperfect and trying to keep up (which I've been doing), or develop the confidence and inner satisfaction so that you can be completely happy with your life even if others seem to have more "picture perfect" lives.