Ramblings: Fall Pics

It's that dreaded time of year again. My palms are constantly clammy and the dread has rolled itself into a dense football sized pit in my stomach. As much as I've tried to put IT out of my mind, IT just keeps looming closer and closer by the day.

What? What, you ask, could cause such a vile reaction? If any of you have ever tried to get six heads pointed in the same general direction while simultaneously eliciting smiles from all or a majority of the six heads, without any freakish or obscene looking body and/or hand positions, then you know what I'm talkin' about.

The taking of the annual family photo to send out with the Christmas cards.

I keep waiting for the year when everyone is old enough to cooperate and manage this task without the grand misery of past Christmas picture-taking years gone by.

F.Y.I. This is not going to be that year.

I am envisioning a frantic scene with weeping, whaling, and gnashing of 5 sets of teeth (Jeremy's grouped with the kids on this one--he's generally just as crabby on picture day because I'm making him suffer through it with me).

This year I decided to take babysteps towards the photo session of the entire family by trying to get individual pictures of each of the kids to update our photo wall in the "dining room." ("Dining Room" is thrown around loosely here, as it only sees table-action during Thanksgiving when we set up the big folding table in there. With four small demolition-machines, acquiring and worrying about a fancy-shmancy set of dining furniture has not been much of a priority. It's currently stuffed with books, toys, and comfortable story-time seating. Hopefully by Christmas it will also house a piano so I can start harassing the kids about one more thing: practicing for their piano lessons.)

Anyway, I started with the most cooperative victim. Maddie was ready and willing to be a "superstar model" and troop around until I snapped a few I thought would work. She was definitely the easiest and most photogenic of the crew. I did not include any where she's sticking her booty out with her hands on her hips--apparently she's been flipping through my People magazine. **Note to interested picture-loving Grandmas--If you click on the pictures, they should pop open practically life-sized for you**

Then I ran home and redressed the other crazies for an attempt to get a) a shot of the twins together where they are not engaged in an Ultimate Fighting Championship reenactment and b) a remotely decent picture of all the crazies together without any tongue protrusions or eye stretching involved, wherein hopefully they all look like human children and not rabid street dogs.

See that stick Avery's holding? Any guesses on how long it took until he started trying to beat Aidan senseless with that prop?We managed to get 3/4 of the kids looking at the camera. Maddie was apparently smiling for the paparazzi snapping pictures from somewhere in the trees on my left (probably hoping to make next month's issue of People). I think these particular smiles were elicited from Jeremy's monkey imitation next to the camera (I'm not joking--I actually made him act like a monkey because for some reason the oooh-ooh ahhh-ahhh noises always make them laugh. And the more rabid the monkey and foamier the mouth, the better the smiles.)

I didn't get a chance to take one of Alex by himself. His smile gets really weird and his eyes become super squinty after about three minutes of posing, so I'm going to have to be fast at catching a decent one and I didn't even bother trying after the group shots. He was sick on picture day at school, so I don't even have that as a backup (not that those are ever that good).

I'll keep you posted on the family picture. If you're really special you may even receive the hideous thing in a Christmas card in a few weeks. And even if you're not really special but for some inconceivable reason you want one anyway, email me your address and I'll send one off. Until then, the football of dread will remain lodged somewhere between my appendix and liver.