Picture Day

As a scrapbooker, photographer, mom, I should love picture day. I should look forward to picture day. But over the past few years, I have learned that Picture Day is not all it is cracked up to be. First of all, we expect as moms that this day poses the likelihood that we will be receiving a beautiful photo of our beloved children in four to six weeks which we can proudly display on our mantles. We also hope that the time we spend trying to find the “perfect shirt” will pay off by giving us a picture of our children in new clean clothing. We also hope that the picture will be suitable to keep tucked away in our wallets just waiting to be shown to every long lost friend we may run into at the Target.
These things rarely happen.
The pictures are usually not very good. The clothing you scoured the earth to find never stays clean long enough to get the picture taken and young children are just not as cooperative as you think when you bring in an adult they have never seen before with a camera. I learned this very quickly a couple years ago when I got a cute picture of my son with an extremely dirty shirt. And last year, when he had clean clothes, but his smirk was one I had never seen before and hope not to see again. (wanted to post picture, but apparently the smirk has taken down the program)
He is not your average child, a quality on most days I find endearing. But how many children come home the day before picture day and demand teeth whitening? How many 9 year olds demand to wear a shirt and tie? This is my son. This was my headache this morning. And to make matters worse, he informs me after finding a shirt and tie, that pictures are not being taken until after gym class. Well, it is still quite warm here, about 82 today and there was no way I was sending him to school in a shirt and tie to run around in during gym class. I thought maybe shorts and the shirt? Sure, he would look like the lead singer of AC/DC, but it would be a look that would be remembered. I spoke with the teacher to find out if he could possibly “change” into his picture clothes. Well, there was no time for that and besides not only were the pictures taken right after gym but not until after lunch and two recesses. I was given the standard “if you don’t like the pictures you can retake them in 3 weeks.” So he wore shorts and a polo shirt. (the back-up outfit) And he was not happy.
I asked little Max immediately upon picking him up how pictures were, he told me, “I was pretty sweaty after flag football and you aren’t going to like them.” Last year, we kept the stupid smirk picture to teach him a lesson. Maybe enough people would laugh at the picture, we would never see it again. Looks like that lesson failed. Who’s teaching whom??
BTW...that nice empty space at the top of my blog is where my new title picture is supposed to go, but I still haven't figured out how or how to put it back to the way it was. So, there sits the open space to remind me every day what a HTML failure I am.....ahhhhh.