A picture's worth

I grew up in a family that went to Penney's every year and had family pictures taken. It was 20 tortured filled minutes. There was always some yelling and then some crying involved. If we just got the job done we could all go out to McDonald's afterwards. Gotta have that 8 x 10 for the wall every year. It was a stressful week beforehand with heated discussions about what we would wear, haircuts needing to happen, and even parentals making children practice their smiles in hopes of capturing an acceptable smile, come picture time. Because of this scarring experience, I have never once taken Elliott or Lily or the family to have professional pictures taken. The feelings of stress that would well up inside when I thought about picking outfits or having to commit to a picture taking date, knowing committing to such dates causes the powers of the universe to attract scratches and bruises to your child's face, was something I could live without so we'd never done it. I justify it by taking tons of pictures and which I dutifully upload into monthly online albums through Snapfish. I'm even one of the people in America left who pick my favorite pictures and get them printed out and put them into books where I write cheesy and obvious captions.

When I found out that there was a professional photographer in our ward and I found her website, I became completely enamored with her style and I knew my never-been-photographed days would be coming to an end. As hard as it was, I committed to a date about 6 weeks in advance. And true to my expectations, come the days prior it seemed like hard wooden objects were being magnetized to Elliott's face and he had more than average falls. Almost 3 year olds are not fans of putting cold packs on boo boos to reduce swelling and bruising. Luckily, kid bodies heal miraculously quickly and he didn't have any facial owies by picture time! Another big struggle was finding coordinating clothing. I didn't want Sunday best. I didn't want my kids looking like an ad for Children's Place. But the color schemes of infant size girl clothes are not the same as toddler size boy clothes. It was even hard to find a toddler polo shirt without a fire truck or some sort of picture on it. It ended up that Elliott wore a bright, bold, medium green colored polo shirt with green stripes. I wore a simple white shirt. Brian wore a bright light blue polo shirt. And Lily wore a pink shirt with a floral skirt with the rest of our colors in the skirt. I liked our clothes but I think in retrospect, maybe I would have gone with navy, white, and red?

The photographer is a natural light photographer, meaning the pictures would be taken outside. And the best time to do pictures outside is around 5:30 in the evening. Boy that is a hard time for our kids. Elliott's always tired because he doesn't take naps anymore and that is a hard time for Lily because she's trying to get her last nap in before bedtime. Picture day, things were going great, Elliott had taken a nap(!) and things were going great for Lily. I looked gorgeous with all the hard work I'd put into my hair and makeup and everyone was dressed and not crying and we got in the car and... it's raining. And I say to myself, My faith will stop this rain! I've been looking forward to this evening for 6 weeks and have planned and worked so hard today to make the kids happy for this evening and we WILL get to take pictures! Nope. It was raining. So we planned to try again the next evening. I think it was a really good thing that happened because I was wound so tight, trying to suppress all my picture taking stress from my upbringing, I might have snapped.

So the next day, I worked hard to wear Elliott out so he would take a nap. Then I did all the tricks I could to get him to fall asleep, usually a snooze cruise in the car will knock him out. No go. NO nap and I've gone and gotten him so tired and cranky. He is having meltdowns as we try to get his picture clothes on him. But I make a conscious effort to keep my cool. Of course on our 20 minute drive to the picture location, Elliott falls asleep, despite me feeding him sugary sweets on the way. Not good. We arrive and the evening is swelling with humidity like a diaper about to leak in 81 degree temperatures. I just picked Elliott up out of his carseat and set him on his feet and he woke up. When he found out we were doing something fun, everything was okay. It was warm and sticky and sweaty but I was able to enjoy the experience a lot more because of our trial run the night before. That's a hard job getting a 5 month old and a 2 year old to look and smile at the same time, but hopefully she got some good ones. And hopefully my hair looked good. =) We shot at 3 different places and it took about an hour and half so there should be lots of cute ones. I won't see the proofs for about a month so I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas morning. I'm so excited and so glad I overcame my fear of professional photography sessions. Capturing the special way your family looks and feels and acts and loves today is priceless.