The "too cute" family

From time to time, I receive emails from friends and family with photos of their children, or links to family websites. They are not interesting in the least, except maybe to immediate family. Why do these "Kodak moments" have to be shared on websites with anyone other than the immediate family? If they were interesting photos...The Louvre, for instance. Or the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or the Grand Canyon, maybe. But no. Here's Mommy and Junior taking a nap. Here's Mommy and Sissy taking a nap. Here's Daddy and Junior taking a nap. Here's Daddy and Sissy taking a nap. What, no Mommy and Daddy taking a nap?

Why do parents, mothers, think the whole world is interested in seeing their napping pictures? "Look how cute we are!" is what they seem to be saying, but why? It never occured to me to take family nap photos, let alone think of sharing such photos with the world if we had taken such photos.

Here's Sissy in the sand. Here's Junior in the sand. Here's Daddy and Junior in the sand...Ooooh. The Cute Family at the beach. Quick, someone write a book with a Movie of the Week deal.

Then there's The Cute Family and birthday parties. They aren't interesting in real life, why would we care about photos of the parties? Dear Parent, most of us aren't interested.

Then there are the scrapbooks that the Mommy's of The Too Cute Family put together. Dear Parent, when you've seen one photo of your kid, we've seen them all. Twenty shots of the same kid standing on the same steps is a tad repetitive. I'm sure that you are aware of all of the nuances of your children's expressions, but they all look the same to us. Whole scrapbooks are tedious to sit through. We don't care where you got the special blue paper (unless we ask), or the little miniature sports stickers and doo dads. When I see the scrapbooks coming out, I quickly remember a dental appointment.

Not only are photos of other peoples kids boring, but I wonder about the "why" of the whole thing...why does the Too Cute Family (can't blame the kids for what the parents do) want the whole world to see them in the intimate moments of napping? Why do they want us to see the birthday parties, the gifts, every move they make? All kids have a First Day of Kindergarten/Preschool, why are we interested in yours? The only thing that I can think of to say is "That's too cute!"

I'm sure that you take that as a comppliment, Dear Parent. But think for a moment before sending out photos of the family that should stay in the family. What is it that you are saying by sending the photos out to the world? "Look how cute we are"? I take it as a form of showing off. Not an admirable quality. And those of us who do not engage in such showing off wonder what happened to your brain once you became a parent!