mom in the mirror

Recently, I attended a parade with my daughters. My four-year-old, in an effort to signal her pleasure and excitement, pumped her fist into the air with a loud "woop!" I was delighted but also befuddled. To the best of my knowledge she doesn't even know who Arsenio Hall is. Look at this amazing creature unfolding herself in front of my eyes -- my non-projecting, open-environment, free-to-be you-and-me, eyes.

Then I began to notice something. Me ... fist pumping.

It seems every time I turned around that week, I was pumping my fist and wooping about something. Why? Beats the hell out of me; I didn't even know I was doing it. With this observation, a reckoning was ignited: I began to look at my daughter, and -- like a cartoon character on an island seeing their side-kick as a chicken wing -- saw only a mirror. And a bizarre face staring back at me.

Left: Random fist pump baby found on awesome site of fist pumps pics