Camera Shy

I am deathly afraid of family photos.

Not all family photos, just my own... and maybe deathly afraid is a bit strong terminology.  Actually, the photos themselves are just fine.  It's having them taken, or rather - dun dun duhhhhhhh! - what happens once we have them taken.

It goes something like this:

Here I am... at least, add ten inches of hair and subtract twenty years and that's me when I was still single. 

(I just did a drawing for the last post, and I really don't have time to try and recreate a younger version of myself!)

But, of course, that's exactly what I just spent forever doing!  (Notice: I used the photoshop red-eye feature to eliminate my demon eye...)
Enter Husband, and the most photographed day of our lives. (I humoured him and gave him dark brownish hair here, though in my estimation - and I still have quite an eye, as you can see - his hair was black.  Was being the operative word.  Family life has added a few whitish highlights.) The beginning of our family photos...

One month before our first anniversay, enter Firstborn...and goodbye sleep!  Despite that, we couldn't have been happier.  Yet two years later...

       ...a Son!  A beautiful little girl and perfect,baby boy -  ideal right?  But, in the words of the immortal  Dr. Suess, "that is not all, oh no, that is not all!" 

 Another two years and Second Daughter joins the clan, and now we're officially out-numbered - but happy, deliriously happy. Of course, the third child feels like thirty, and I no longer have enough hands to reign in the troups...

Now, you're probably thinking that three children in four years is enough maternal fulfillment for any woman. And you're probably right... except I am not just any woman.  I am Mrs. Overacheiver!  I am in my glory!  Despite being a "mature mother" to begin with - look how fully functioning this old body is, popping out babies, supplying endless nourishment! - it was always my goal to write and illustrate children's books, and here I am being provided with enough fodder to fill a library. 

If only I had the time...

Instead, Baby Girl Three, right on schedule.  Still deliriously happy, blah, blah, blah...


Note:  The above family portrait is merely a simulation of an actual event. I had finally figured out the connection: get photo taken = get pregnant.  Not that I'd trade even one of the messy, little Critters.  I am, after all, their loving Momster.

But I put off having another family photo done.

And put it off...

...and put it off.

In the interim, I drew our family into numerous unfinished maunscripts, and strove to be the most fantabulous stay-at-home mom ever... though I did accidentally kick a hole in the bathroom wall during one Momster Meltdown.  (Better than kicking the cat, right?  Oh, and I fixed the hole all by myself as pennance.)

But then God figured out I was messing around with his system.  He enlisted the whole tri-parish area to recitify the situation with an insidious plan, code-named "New Church Directory".  I had managed to put off the issue of a family photo for over eight years, but now Husband insisted we be included in the pictoral listing.  And being the good Christian wife that I am, I complied.

Now, that wasn't so hard was it?

The following is merely a simulation of an actual event...