Minnie's influencer content/ an unexpected mini rant

 Can I just preface this by saying I give very very very few effs about screen time? My overwhelming belief (from the absolute privilege of being a quantity time mom) is that if I want my kid off their phone/tv/iPad/Xbox/Nintendo, then I need to present a more alluring option. And sometimes? I am fresh out of options. 

All of this is to say that Minnie has been watching some whacked out Netflix show about a child influencer (it's for kids, I am pretty sure, and this "pretty" is definitely where you guys can judge me. A Good Mom would FOR SURE KNOW and might have a complicated formula around watching it-- if you do 30 minutes of X and 20 minutes of Y and also brush your teeth, then you can buy 15 minutes of consuming Z-- and Z would DEFINITELY BE VETTED and probably also available to be multiplied by a factor of time spent moving your body* (A)) and has now started talking to the camera in a very brand-conscious way.

AND. She wanted me to film her swimming and practicing what she is learning at swim lessons.

Some mornings look like this

Other mornings, I am showing her that if she borrows a longer cord from a big bro and sits near an outlet, she can play on her iPad WHILE she charges.

**The phrase move your body or move my body drives me absolutely batty, you guys. Like is exercise a bad word? I MOVE MY BODY all day long but not in a way that contributes to my cardiac health or my muscle building. Why not name the specific things we do for our bodies? Running? Walking? Lifting weights? Practicing yoga? Pulling weeds? Stretching? Maybe it is all the work I have had to do over the last 10 years around naming learning outcomes, but you guys. VERBS MATTER. Specificity matters. Language determines our reality, and MOVE MY BODY is such a bland nothingburger of a phrase. Sometimes being a rhetorician makes very very very cranky. I think it is better, generally, to reclaim a term (if exercise feels inaccessible) than to use a new/less clear term. Gardening is exercise, for example. I guess I am an Eve Ensler feminist after all.