Have you ever taken a small child to get their picture taken? Well, I did for the first time and I must say it was an adventure. I have never been to a portrait studio before. Well, not as an adult anyway. I know I have been in one because there are a few pictures of me as a child that look professional, but I have no recollection of it nor do I remember any stories from my mom about the difficulty in getting just the right shot. Let alone how hard it is just getting to the studio.
It started off like any other typical morning, but as we were getting ready to put our coats on to leave for the studio, I heard that dreaded sound of a child running, then falling, the crash sound the fall made, and then the high pitched scream of the little guy who hit his head hard on the corner of the door. When I ran in to get him I could see the “goose egg” already starting to form on his forehead. “Oh, no! I can’t believe this is happening”, I thought to myself. I was concerned mostly with his injury, but as I picked him up to console him I couldn’t help but think about the pictures we were scheduled to have taken. As I applied ice and watched the clock, I contemplated re-scheduling, but if I did that, then the pictures we wanted to give as gifts may not be ready in time.
After applying ice for 10 minutes and checking pupils a dozen times I convinced myself he was OK to go. Though I knew his head hurt I thought that the worst was over. Gee, that was naive of me. When I went to put his coat on the zipper got stuck and jammed. This seemed to be of great concern to my son and the more he squirmed and fought me, the hotter he got. The hotter he got, the more aggravated he got. The more aggravated he got, the more he cried. Ever try and get a zipper unstuck on a crying, squirming toddler? It can be ugly. I only pray my son doesn’t repeat at Grandma’s my under the breath comments that were made to the zipper.
Finally, the zipper gave in to my threats and decided to release my son and myself from its tortures grip. Then of course after making it to the door, my son decided he was thirsty. Since we live in a split level, we had to tromp back up the stairs to get a drink. This was good in a way as I had forgotten to pick up my keys, the gift certificate I had for the portraits, a comb for his hair and I had also remembered I needed to reload. Now when I say “reload” I don’t mean the reloading of a revolver, I mean reloading my purse with a baggie of Cheerios for those emergency melt downs. I had used all my previous reserves on last night’s chiropractic appointments. My husband and I both had decided to go see the chiropractor at the same time. What were we thinking?!
So after a few more minutes of chaos, I was ready to walk out the door. However, my son had decided that he now wanted to play with his cars. So my choice of timing to leave did not agree with him. There is nothing heavier than a screaming toddler that throws his head back and arches his back while you try and hold him with one arm, your purse in the other and get out the door and into the car. No wonder I have to see the chiropractor so often.
Now for the getting into the car. Pretty easy, right? Wrong. With my little car, there is barely enough room for the car seat and only enough headroom for an elf. So what do I do? I accidentally hit his head on the door frame when trying to get his still screaming, rigid body into the car seat. This of course causes the screaming to reach new levels. Of course the neighbors conveniently also seem to be leaving their homes at the same time and manage to see the abuse going on. I hear them mumbling their silent prayers for my son.
Did I mention it was very cold, raining and the wind was blowing? Of course it was, fate wouldn’t have it any other way. Once he was in the car seat, I somehow managed to get the straps around him and his thick winter coat. No easy feat even when he wants to ride in his seat. I guess the neighbors’ prayers did work after all.
I got in and took a deep breath. I asked myself, “Do I really want a picture of this child?” My answer was, “Yes, even with all this I still love him and want a nice photo to hang on my wall and to share with family.” So off we went. I said a prayer to help us at least get there without any more mishaps. God must have taken pity on me, because believe it or not the ride was smooth. We even found a parking spot on the ground floor of the mall’s garage near the door! Wow! Got to love those prayers!
Once inside the mall, my son forgot all about his troubles. He pointed and smiled at all the Christmas decorations. We went right up to the portrait studio and we were taken in to their room right away. The people who do that for a living have to be medicated. How else can they take a child who does not want their picture taken, who refuses to sit where and how they want and put up with parents expecting their child to look like the ones on the demo pictures out front? Whatever it is they are paying them, it isn’t enough. You’d never know that in every shot, I’m only about six inches away.
Actually my son did quite well on his first time and the pictures came out pretty good. I managed to hide the bump on his head with is hair, though the close up showed puffy eyes from the crying. The picture lady, in an effort to either be nice or sell pictures tried to tell me it wasn’t that noticeable, but you couldn’t help but notice, one eye was puffier than the other. I asked to see the other poses. In fact I asked to see the other poses a thousand times over. I couldn’t decide. I found myself apologizing for taking so long. This allowed her the opportunity to jump in and try to sell me their premium package.
Have you ever seen the prices on these packages? I could buy a decent running car for that! Why would I want to spend that kind of money on a puffy eyed picture? I told her to keep going. Package after package kept going by. It started out with me, out of politeness, to let her explain the package and all you get with it, to asking what the price was first and saying, “Nope”, “Too expensive”, “Not in my budget”, to “You’ve got to be kidding”. This was of course after my son had tore through my Cheerios stash, dropped his toy car out of the stroller a thousand times, begged to get up out of the stroller, begged for a drink, begged for me to hold him then begged to get down a hundred times and then ran his stroller into every shelf, wall, and chair they had. After him nearly running over a little girl, I finally asked if they had anything for the budget minded parent.
Once I settled on a package I ordered my prints. Of course now that I’m home, I wished I had ordered more of the wallet sizes to give out. So to my family, I apologize if you don’t get a photo. I’ll email you ones taken from home. They are probably better anyway though they won’t have that puffy eye look. The next picture you see of me though, will be one with the tall drink in my hand because after we left the studio I decided to go get his picture taken with Santa……..
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