Daughter Of The Digital Revolution…And Her AG Cronies

Who knew that AGSM would open my eyes to how very inspirational my daughter Lulu could be?

AGSM = American Girl Stop Motion = YouTube craze = Lulu’s new favorite pastime

Stop motion videos are super cool, if you’ve never had the pleasure of watching one.  Lulu stumbled upon the YouTube channel and has been obsessed ever since.  An endless stream of hours with Mia, Rebecca, Caroline; sitting, standing, waving, climbing, dancing, and chatting.  But Lulu can’t figure out how to get herself out of the video and with stop motion, that’s a no-no.  The dolls come to life in these videos.  No human intervention is permitted.

Lulu watched and dissected the videos, almost as if to solve the mystery of a magic trick.  I was no help.  I’m not a videophile.  Some may say I’m a bit technologically challenged.  I can’t even figure out how to use our XBOX360.

She tried and failed, over and over.  Finally, she resorted to Google and was so excited to find instructional videos about how to make stop motion videos because, of course, videos about how to make videos are ubiquitous on the Internet.

Once Lulu had the camera app for the bargain price of $9.99, she was ready to flex her moviemaker muscles.  Except she quickly found out that stop motion is tedious as hell to produce.  But that only slightly deterred her.  She only threatened to throw her iPad out the window once.  I would have been so done long before that.

Lulu persevered like a champ.  And guess what?  She produced her own stop motion video.  It makes me a little dizzy to watch because she’s showing way too many frames per second, but we can fix that.

What happens when you have a kid who succumbs to frustration and shies away from a challenging endeavor?  Luckily I don’t need to worry about that.  Lulu’s dedication to achieving the final objective inspires me.  She won’t give up until she finds success.  At the tender age of eight, she already has the game of life down pat.

How can I ever be tempted to throw in the towel with such a source of inspiration surrounding me on a daily basis?