So, I attempted the impossible recently.  I tried to take my 3 kids to get their picture taken as a gift for my wife on mother’s day.  It was a nice idea and we'll have to hope that it truly is the thought that counts, because the end product looked like crap.

My 5 year old, Audra, had been sick with an ear infection, so the photo shoot had been delayed until she could look at a camera without grimacing.  Which would normally have been ok, but I had already delayed the photo so my 10 month old would be over cutting his top teeth and my 2 year old would miraculously turn into a calm, compliant child who smiled on command.  So, when none of those things happened, I just took the last available appointment before Mother’s Day and hoped for the best.

So, here it was, the Friday before Mother's Day at 4:00 in the afternoon (right in the middle of nap time – brilliant!) and I'm trying to get a 5 year old, 2 year old, and 10 month old to all look at the camera at the same time and smile.  I might as well have tried to orchestrate the Israeli Palestinian peace accord. I would have had about the same chances of success and there probably would have been less screaming.

So, like usual, these endeavors always begin with a mass costume change, as I try to get three squirmy kids to strip out of their play clothes and change into the specially chosen matching outfits that will create that once in a lifetime picture designed to make Anne Geddes cry into her chai latte over her professional inadequacy.  

It never quite works out like that though does it?  At one point I was practically sitting on my son in an effort to shoehorn him into his pants.  It was like trying to put a pair of overalls on a python – all wriggling and sliding away.  Is this what Anne goes through trying to squeeze a sunflower on some baby’s head?

Eventually, everyone is appropriately cute and the 18 year old “photographer” starts setting up the shots.  The shots would be great if my children would only stop acting their ages and sit perfectly still and smile benignly at the camera for 30 seconds or more at a time.  For some reason they won’t do this.  Every time I manage to get my 10 month old, Micah to smile, my two year old is staring at the ceiling or trying to drag a tricycle into the photo.

At one point I had everyone calm and smiling until I realized that Asher had snuck a chocolate granola bar and somehow fed it to his siblings when I wasn’t looking so that all the kids had these gooey chocolate smiles where their teeth were all covered in black sludge.  They looked like a bunch of country bumpkins with their toothless smiles staring manically at the camera.  If you put a row of corn stalks in front of them, it would look like a scene from Hee Haw.

So the photographer and I spend about half an hour torturing the children:  

“Micah! Micah!  Smile!  That’s right!  Oooooohhhh peek a boo! Peeeeeeek a boo!  Ah wa cha cha! ASHER! SMILE AT THE CAMERA!  No, Micah don’t cry, it’s ok.  Yes, It’s Ok. Ok ok ok ok.  Audra!  Don’t touch him!  Oh!  Look what you did, now he’s crying too.  NO!  Asher!  Put the basket down!  No, wait.  Micah!   Come here, don’t crawl over to…. Asher!  Put your pants back on.  That’s right, ok, everybody smile.  Say cheeseburger!  Say, Fancy pants!  Say Wocka wocka wocka!  Say… Micah! Over here, over here, look over... OVER HERE!  Hey what’s that black stuff in your mouth….”

You get the picture.

Anyway, we finally packed up, changed everyone back into clothes they were allowed to get dirty in and said a quick prayer to the patron saint of 1 hour photos that we would get at least one picture that I could spend an excessive amount of money on.

Well, an hour later, I’m sitting at the computer looking at the samples and I have to say, they are all absolutely terrible.  The sad part is that it wasn’t my two little boys who caused the problem, it was my five year old who was being very good and very sweet and doing her best to sit there and smile at the camera just like I asked so that she could make a nice present for Mommy.  But bless her heart she was still not 100% well, and all of her smiles were these warped droopy eyed affairs that looked like she was drugged up on codeine or had just finished her 24 hour nursing shift at the hospital, or was simply a poor, sweet, sad looking 5 year old girl who was trying her darndest to smile through the sickness.

It broke my heart.  But it still didn’t get me any closer to having a mother’s day picture.  So we packed it in, and decided to settle for a nice card and an IOU.  Luckily my wife is one of the more understanding women on the planet.  It’s one of the many reasons I married her and one of the many reasons she makes such a great mom.  So I felt ok about that.  What I didn’t feel ok about is the fact that I’ve got to come back to this third circle of hell and try again in a week or two to get that perfect picture.  Oh well.  It’s for mom and I’d do pretty much anything for mom.