Picture Perfect

It's that time of year, time for baking cookies, building snowmen, wrapping gifts, and getting pictures taken. Ah yes, the ever anticipated event of getting your kids all dressed up and then taking them to get their photos taken. All the while threatening them with their lives if they get wrinkled or rumpled or mess up their hair.

When Eva was a baby I loved getting her picture taken. I would get her all dolled up and we would traipse off to the mall. The most difficult part was deciding what to order as one picture was cuter than the last. Then Quinn was born, and Eva was 2. Ok, things got a little trickier, but not too bad. Eva was still very accommodating and Quinn was too little to do much.

Life has certainly progressed. I'm sorry to say, but pictures are no longer easy, and certainly not fun. Of course these days the stress starts days, often weeks before the blessed event. I have to decide on outfits. Formal? Dressy? Casual? Somewhere in between? Should they match? Color coordinated? Should there be a theme? This is where John loses interest and tells me I'm crazy. This does not usually help.

This year I actually had a fairly easy time finding the right outfits - coordinating, but no theme. We even made it to Sears without any serious mishaps. Eva was an angel, and Dexter slept through almost the whole thing. Then there's Quinn. Now, in his defense, he's only 19 months. That's a hard age to simultaneously stand still, look at one thing, and smile.

The photographer was EXTREMELY patient with us. It took us well over an hour (we were scheduled for 15 minutes). The result? We have the most beautiful picture of all three looking straight at the camera and smiling (well, Dex isn't smiling, but he looks quite content). You can't even tell that Quinn was smiling for exactly the one quarter of a second and then promptly flung himself over backwards and started to scream. Doesn't matter though, I have a fantastic picture this year for Christmas cards :)