Making Love to the Camera and Chickens

I wish my two topics were more closely (though not intimately!) related, because those two topics together makes me laugh. I imagine some scene with Gonzo posing his chickens in some boudoir setting. Sick but amusing to me.

Anyway, unrelated topics, but I had some stuff on the camera to share.

I worry about a lot of things. It's what I do. Pretty much every day I worry that I'm not having the right kind of influence on my kids. That they'll be too . . . whatever isn't ideal and whatever can be traced by to me. The list is long and undistinguished. But one of the things that I worry about every time I pull out the camera is what kind of kids I'm creating by always having the camera close at hand.

My kids both learned from an early age how to ham for the camera. It took Gabe a bit to get into it, but Norah starts to put on a show just about as soon as she sees the camera now--and she has been doing that for several months now.

I worry that I'm creating narcissists who constantly crave not only the attention of being in front of the camera but of being able to go back and see and admire themselves in the results.

Did I mention that Gabe is pretty obsessed with his Baby Gabe movies? They are pretty much the only thing he wants to watch right now. I burned one of Norah's first year and a half (yeah, poor girl, Gabe had two DVDs worth of material for his first 18 months, and Norah only got one DVD), and he watched it through once, but only because I told him that he'd be in several of the clips. He obviously didn't feel as though he was in ENOUGH of them, though. And Norah didn't really care to sit down and watch herself either. So that movie has received tepid reviews so far.

But I'm not sure how I feel about the whole thing. On the one hand, I do worry that I'm creating monsters of some sort. But I worry about that no matter what I do. Every action I take on a daily basis--to my mind, at least--is going to result in my children climbing a bell tower. And this kind of monster, at least, might be able to get an acting or performing job of some sort. Which brings me to the possible positive outcomes. I might also be creating entertainers, and though entertainers are certainly prone to troubles of their own, everyone loves them. At the very least they are sociable people who aren't afraid to engage with people they don't know, and I can't stress enough how much I hope my children are not like me in this sense.

So maybe I'm not destroying their futures by putting them in front of the camera on a regular basis. Or maybe I am. There's no telling. But at least they are producing some worthwhile pictures/videos along the way (so far, the Baby Gabe and Baby Norah videos are actually proving rather interesting to watch--they've both been pretty entertaining kids so far).

First, here's a set of pictures that I got of Gabe the other day. I was sitting here in my office and picked up the camera to check and see if I had anything new to post on here. While I was holding it, Gabe told me to take his picture. And he started creating these various poses for my benefit.

Is this gangsta?

This one is definitely gangsta. Not sure where he's getting these poses. It's not like he spends his time watching . . . I don't even know. What kind of show would have people posing for pictures like this? Is he interning with one of the half dozen photographers here in town that keep using the alleyway behind the bookstore for senior picture poses (I guess because the bricks look "fatigued" or "oppressed" or whatever the term is for when it starts to chip and look chic)? I don't know where this stuff comes from.

The poses with the phone were a little weird. He sure does like having his phones around, though. Again, something I worry about (is he TOO familiar with technology? Can one be too familiar with technology these days? Should one be too familiar with technology? Someone get me something for these ulcers that I'm getting).

Phone as hat. This, I'm guessing, is his "think piece."

And then there's Norah. Sweet, adorable, bitchy Norah. She's getting to be quite the cheeser, too. Though she hasn't started in with the interpretative posing as Gabe has.

This may be one of the most adorable pictures ever taken by anyone.

Finally, the chickens. Libby and Gabe went out and bought replacement chickens last night (remembering that our last six all got eaten by something). She made some modifications to our storage shed in the back. Permanent modifications of the cutting-a-hole-in-the-side-and-building-a-roosting-nest-inside variety. Probably not ideal, but I suppose it's better than having an entirely new chicken coop built in our backyard for the buggers.

As they came home, Gabe came up with some names for his chickens. We kept two of his original three and helped him come up with a third.

Here are the chickens and Gabe sharing their names.

In case you couldn't make out the names, the black and white one is Bucket Truck, the orange and black one is Fire Hose, and the orange and white one (the one on the far right) is Volcano. Originally, Volcano's name was Firetruck. But we thought it would be too confusing to have a Firetruck AND a Fire Hose, so we convinced him to come up with a new name.

Now we just wait for these to die as well.