Family Portraits

This morning, our friend Scott Langley came to our house to take some family photos. I had a few ideas (some courtesy of my newfound love of Pinterest), a whole bunch of props, and an understanding that baby photos don’t always work out the way that you’d like them to. I was prepared to give up if she had a meltdown. I was also prepared to artfully prop her up against things if she fell asleep. Having a baby doesn’t always mesh with my Type-A personality and my need to over-plan everything, but I think it’s been good for me that I’ve been forced to practice going with the flow.

Little did she know, we’d be making good use of her onesie.

We decided to start around 10am, which I thought would work nicely with her morning nap schedule. Of course, she picked this morning to let us all sleep in. Which I will never complain about. Ever. Never. So, her nap didn’t start until much later than usual. At this point, I was prepared for her to sleep through our entire session or to wake up inconsolable. Luckily for us, she woke up all on her own about 20 minutes before Scott showed up. That gave me just enough time to feed her and change her and to put her in outfit one of many.

I made a tutu for our session. Because I’m crazy like that.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I think that our session went really, really well. Lilian had a few fussy moments, but she was about as cooperative as you can expect a not-quite-three-month-old to be. She had a mini meltdown about twenty minutes in, but a few minutes with her pacifier and some quick cuddles and she was all smiles again. If I had a more sadistic nature, I would use this session as an excuse to turn into a stage mom. She stayed awake and alert for the whole shebang. We’d taken plenty of photos when I noticed that she seemed to be fading, so we quickly called it a day. And then she conked out about 27 seconds later. And slept for a few hours.

I’m confident that we got a decent shot to use for our Christmas card this year. Plus, a bunch of other photos that Lilian can look back to when she’s older and say “My parents were weird. Really, really weird.” I mean, how else is she going to explain the onesie I put her in that has a head of garlic on it and the phrase, “I Stink?” Or the fact that I accessorized said onesie with some actual garlic? And a ridiculous hair bow?

I’m actually not such a huge fan of photos of myself these days. I think I look haggard and vaguely puffy in all of them. But I also don’t want my daughter to look at her baby photos and wonder if I ran away and joined the circus for the duration of her baby years. So, family portraits it was. Scott’s a professional, so I trusted him to choose the most flattering angles possible. Too bad there isn’t a “de-haggard” filter in photoshop.

All in all, I’d say it was a successful session.