April 09, 2003 - 2:01 p.m.
I am exhausted...
This is Marcus's 9th month, which means it's time for another photo appointment to add to his 1st year panel that I'm creating for him: 4 pictures, 1 every 3 months. Since it's been over six months since I took Zachary along (and dedicated readers will remember how that went) I thought it would be a nice idea to dress the boys in their new(ish) Easter clothes and have a nice portrait done of them together.
Reason really should have kicked me in the head about then.
Now I say new(ish) clothes because Zachary's outfit was actually bought some months ago. He's worn it to church once already. But when I went shopping for them a week ago I could find absolutely nothing in Zack's size. There were acres and acres of girls' dresses, complete with little straw bonnets and lace socks, but only about 1/2 a rack of boys' "Sunday" clothing - and that had been pretty well picked over. All that was left were knit shirts and khakis, and Zack has plenty of those already. I ended up buying Marcus something that matches what Zack already has so at least they'll match in style.
So this morning I dressed them in their little button down shirts, slacks, and sweater vests and drove them over to Sears. My little men were looking quite handsome. We had an 11:30 appointment and, perhaps because of the rain, there were no walkins backing up the schedule. I allowed myself to hope for an easy and uneventful session.
But the problem with trying to photograph 9 month olds is that they have learned how to get around. Marcus isn't crawling yet, but he's very adept at scooting and rolling and that photo studio was just far too interesting for him to remain sitting in front of the camera. More than once I caught him just before he rolled off the platform. We finally confined him to a little wicker chair, which was very cute but also reminded me of the cardinal rule of dressing a baby for photographs - collared shirts make him look as if he has no neck.
Zachary was highly interested in getting into the picture until it was his turn. Then he had no desire to sit next to his brother, particularly when his brother was obesessed with pulling his hair! Everytime we got them sitting nicely, one or both would wiggle away before the camera could snap. We thought a toy train might distract them enough to leave one another alone a moment, but they just fought over it. We eventually got a good shot of them and happily called an end to it all before moods got ugly.
