Smile!


We went for our first family photo shoot today. Wow, what a nightmare!!

To start the day off, Madeline woke up at 6 AM as usual and had slept through the whole night with no cry-outs!! She ate her breakfast bottle as usual and "talked" to us for a little bit. Off to a good start, BUT normally around 7:15 or 7:30 the fussy monster takes over, and she's ready for a nap. She typically naps until about 9:00 or 10:00 and is ready to eat again. So, I strategically made our appointment for 11:00 AM thinking she'll have just eaten and be in a great mood. Like I said this is NORMALLY what happens. Not today!! Miss Priss decided she was wide awake after her first breakfast and NEVER took a nap. When I say she never does this, I mean that. You could set your watch by her. She was all smiles, cooing, babbling, etc. all morning long, and the more I fretted about her not taking her morning nap, the more wound up she became. We regrouped and decided to feed her a hearty bottle at 9:00 AM thinking she'll eat her bottle, and then she'll take a short power nap before our picture appointment. Silly us...that's way to logical and easy. Nope she promptly fell fast asleep without eating much of her bottle. Great, so now she'll be tired AND hungry by 11:00 AM. Well, her sleeping lasted all of 30 minutes. We tried to shovel in the rest of her bottle and get ready to leave all at the same time. Those of you that know me well probably can envision the mood I am in at this point...I was nearing tears and about lose my mind. (Probably the only reason I didn't was that I was having a good hair day, so at least something was working in my favor!) Afterall this was our very first family photo taken by a real photographer, and it was not what I had planned out. Shouldn't I know by now that when kids/babies are involved, stuff like this happens?? I did teach 10 year olds for 10 years, but I digress... So we manage to get out the door and to our appointment relatively on time. (Not to mention, I HATE being late for appointments, and we were late.) Meanwhile, my relaxed, levelheaded husband is probably about to kill me at this point because I am just in a tizzy. (Hindsight, why was I in such a tizzy?? I couldn't control what was happening, so I needed to let it go.) So we get there and begin the family photos. Madeline amazingly was cooperative. BUT, then it was time for the solo shots of Madeline, and this first time Mommy decided it would be a great idea to do a wardrobe change with an already volatile 3 month old. UMMM, not such a great idea, and I immediately regretted my grandiose plan of having a couple of different outfits planned for this photography session. So, we subject Madeline to several more clicks of the camera, and it took lots, I mean LOTS, of prompting to get half smiles out of her. And, to top it off, I wasn't happy with what she was wearing for the solo shots, but I decided that I'd keep that to myself since I was already testing exactly how patient Eric (and the photographer for that matter) really is at this point. So finally the photographer decided he had enough shots to make it work. Off we go to feed our tired, hungry, and cranky baby who falls fast asleep on the way home.

A couple of hours later after we regrouped, had lunch, and Madeline took a slight nap, we went back this afternoon to view our shots and choose our pictures. We allowed ourselves an hour and a half before Madeline's next feeding. Who knew the indecision that would come over us? Yikes...again we push the envelope and are still at the photographer at 3:45 clearly missing the 3 PM bottle. We get out of there unscathed with a relatively happy baby and an armful of great photos!


So Eric mentioned he wanted to go hunting Friday afternoon, and on the way home, I said to him, "With all I put you through today, perhaps a hunting excursion is exactly what you deserve and NEED!" He just smiled and said, "Thanks babe!"


How do people do this more than once a year? I'm not sure I can go through this again until Madeline hits the one year mark. I'll just have to do better with my own picture taking to document the remaining months of Madeline's first year. But in the end, our nightmare wasn't really a nightmare because we do have some great photos of our family of three and Madeline.