It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Thursday night I was awake from 3-5am. I was stressed about the upcoming day and our appointment to get holiday/birthday portraits at Sears. I hate going by myself with the kids. After many prior stressful experiences, my husband flat out refuses to go with me. At the same time, though, I continue to fork up the money instead of doing portraits at home because I know I can't get them set up and take the pictures on my own.

It was as bad as I expected it would be. Timmy broke out with a rash all over his face right after lunch. He had cheese curls and I think that it may have just been from the rough texture getting rubbed into his face. Since of course, they were all over his face. Our appointment was at 4:30pm. We arrived to almost emptiness with only one person ahead of us. She got taken right away and we got to wait until after 5:oopm. How lucky for her! She was so thrilled that she didn't even have an appointment and they fit her right in. She did have an appointment. She had MY appointment!

As soon as our "photographer" approached me to say she was ready I knew it was going to be bad. She was the typical holiday time hire, who knows nothing and doesn't try at all. She was teeny, young, and oh so soft spoken. Damn it! I told her to stay behind the camera because I knew Timmy was going to be difficult and she would have to snap quickly. I posed them and then jumped back to try to get his attention. It was not a good game plan. He wouldn't stay still (or even kinda still). He wouldn't look up. He wouldn't smile. I was sweating SO bad. Partially because it was 10,000 degrees.

I actually feel like almost every picture session goes this way, but I always do wind up getting a bunch of good pictures. Not this time. I ran out of patience and didn't even get all the backgrounds I wanted. I was so frustrated that the photographer was completely incompetent in even attempting to squeeze a squeaky toy or any other form of attention getting. Katie was getting frustrated that it was taking so long so that even if we did get Timmy to look, she had started to clown around.

When I was viewing my pictures I complained. A lot. The very nice and helpful lady offered to reshoot our pictures, but I insisted that there was no way I could go through the process all over again. She said, no we could grab an empty room then and at least shoot one of the other backgrounds. She added that she was known to be the best photographer there. I figured, "Why not?" My kids already hate me and I'm already frustrated to the point of tears. Can't hurt adding to it now. And she WAS good. She had me pose the kids and then stay right by their side to keep Timmy comforted. She did ALL the work of getting him to smile. And she did. She had him CRACKING UP! Unfortunately, I got nothing but cheesy smiles and wide armed poses from Katie at that point. Ugh!!!

From there, we went to see Santa while we waited for Chris to join us for dinner. We had already seen him once, but the kids weren't dressed for pictures. I was sure Timmy would burst out crying since he was so tired. But he didn't. He was very interested in Santa and had fun playing with his beard.
And although he was so very tired and hungry and sad, we did get him to look at us for a picture. And get another cheesy smile from Katie.

And just to completely illustrate how frustrating kids can be...Katie spent the day with her Grammi yesterday and got to see Santa TWO more times. And guess what, no cheesy smiles for Grammi's pictures!
It really is a good thing that I've learned to expect the worst so as not to be surprised. And looking on the bright side, I did get a helluva good work out.

Debi is hosting Baby Picture Sunday today at Who Says 8 is Enough? Click on over to see who else is playing along and getting into the Christmas spirit!

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Makes My Monday!

What Makes my Monday is thinking about some fun parts of our weekend. Saturday night I had some special alone time with Katie. We haven't been to church in quite awhile and before we went back for Christmas I wanted to go just the two of us. I wanted her to be reintroduced in a one-on-one setting instead of the circus that will be the entire family including Timmy and my in-laws. She tends to act up way more easily when going places with extra family members. It was very special to me because I love going to church and am excited at the idea of her going with me on a regular basis. She did fairly well other than some quiet gymnastics on the pew in front of us during communion prayer, silent tears when she didn't get to receive communion herself, oh and the time I was praying for strength and direction in parenting and turned to see her sitting on the seat with both feet/legs straight up in the air. But for a 3 1/2 year old, I was overall pleased with her behavior. As a reward, afterwards we went to a local lawn and garden center and got to visit with Santa, his elf and his reindeer. She loved getting to see Santa again..a very friendly Santa, who spoke with her for quite awhile. She even remembered to ask for a Dora watch, a car, and a baby doll.

My other favorite part of the weekend was how imaginatively Katie was playing yesterday. It makes my day for her to play with her toys and dolls happily instead of watching tv or playing on the computer. First, I caught her doing some holiday dancing with her dolls. I particularly love that she had them set up in chairs like a little audience and then that she took turns dancing with them just like her daddy was dancing with her and I was dancing with Timmy in the kitchen the other night (pretend you don't notice the butt picking).

And then after I was out doing some Christmas shopping I came home to this sight. She had set up a holiday tea party. Of course she needed Timmy's carseat and bouncy chair for extra seating as well. (I swear Katie and the cat use the car seat, stroller, and bouncy seat more than Timmy does.) Every baby/animal had their own cup and bowl full of play food - all brought up from the basement.

So, alone time with my girl, getting to church this weekend, and witnessing Katie's imaginitive play just Make My Monday. If you want to see what making other people's Monday's, head over to Twinfatuation.

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Beaten down!

We spent the day today at the mall getting pictures of the kids and with Santa. I thought I was going to get to print out one picture to take with me today and get my Christmas cards going - but apparently JC Penny's is still in the ice age of waiting for 2 weeks for ALL your pics. I hadn't been there in awhile and Sears lets you take prints home with you for an additional fee and even purchase a CD to take home with you on the spot. Sears' CD costs about $119, but if you order prints over a certain amount - it's only about $9.99 (at least the last time I got pics there). Unfortunately for me - I called JC Penny to get their pricing earlier in the week, but could only get voicemail - so I decided what the heck and just kept my session there - well it turns out to be $99.99 no matter HOW MANY prints you buy. So, no CD this time - I got the smiles by wire - which aren't great quality - so I'm hoping I'll get to share them here when I eventually get them. But the payoff is that JC Penny sheets are MUCH cheaper than Sears...oh well - you can't win them all.

I went very prepared with pictures printed out from their website to show exact poses and backgrounds that I wanted - except for the fact that they no longer had several of the backgrounds I anticipated. I also had a few outfit changes and went with an order in mind of what we would do first and the order we would do them in. To start, I planned pics of Katie and Timmy together in their Big Sister/Little Brother shirts - so they arrived wearing those outfits - except for the fact that RIGHT before our session began Katie ran over to the water fountain before I could stop her and soaked her shirt. We wound up starting with the pics of diapered Timmy by himself while Chris changed Katie into her Christmas dress and we never did get a chance to get back to the original outfits.

We got tons of great shots, but unfortunately on a bunch of really good ones - they all had something wrong with them. Almost all the black backround shots of Timmy had a great big piece of white fuzz on the drape right next to his head - so every shot with that backround was out. We also had a really cute one of Chris and I holding Timmy (just our hands and arms showing) and there is long black string from the diaper cover draping over my arm. But here's the kicker - there was a semi-cute pic that I wanted to just get a sheet of 3x5's - but it was completely off-center. So I asked if they could crop it in and center it and they could and it looked great - BUT that was then considered an "enhanced" pic and would cost me $14.99 for the sheet instead of the traditional $3.99. HELLO?!?!? Isn't there obligation to take CENTERED pics...if I have to enhance it just to make it look like it should have to begin with shouldn't I not have to pay extra? Well that's my thinking anyway...but I was defeated at that point, so I just let it go. I'm also really mad at myself because I ordered a collage sheet to which I changed out one of the pics they had for another one - then after looking at the session sheet on the way home - I realized the one they had to begin with did look much better. And, as my big splurge at $24.99 for the artsy collage, I'm not about to just reorder it the original way.

It's a shame that the sessions are always so rushed and that many of the pics were ruined by little things like that because our photographer actually did a really good job compared to past experiences. She did a great job posing the kids and knew exactly how to move quickly from shot to shot. At the end of the day, I guess it's a good thing that I had to dump some of the shots from the beginning because of the problems I mentioned, cause I still got way too many and spent way too much money (as usual) - adding them to the decision mix would have just made it that much harder.

On to our Santa visit...They are doing a new thing with Santa pics this year...you can actually get the pics as an electronic file...which I did - but at the risk of ruining the suprise of my Christmas cards (if I'm not able to make them with my JC Penney pics) - I'm going to wait a week or so to share it here.

My poor fixated daughter...she was SO excited to see Santa and tell him what she wanted for Christmas this year. But, when she got to her turn she saw that he had a basket of junky little plastic cups to give to the kids after they were done. She did tell him some stuff very quietly so we're not sure if she did tell him about some toys she wants - but all that she could be heard saying (over and over again) is that she wanted a cup. She really does have a problem with always focusing on the "next" thing about to happen so that she can never enjoy the present. (For example, whenever we're at an amusement park she spends almost the entire time of her ride looking around to see what ride she's going to do next.) So, I think it went something like this. What do you want for Christmas little girl? I want a cup, I want a cup...She did get a great hug in with him though and was super excited about her cup!!

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