Say Cheese.....Please?

The day after Halloween we had a scheduled photo shoot with Sears. In hindsight this wasn’t the best planning on my part; to get two tired, cranky, kids with “Halloween hangovers” up and dressed for a photo shoot. It actually sounds pretty stupid now that I’m writing it. Anyway, the morning started out bad right off the bat. The girls got up fairly early despite having gone to bed on sugar highs at around 11:30 the night before. Alexandria was especially sassy and proceeded to get herself in trouble several times before even leaving the house. Olivia on the other hand was in a decent mood. She even tried to finish dressing herself while I was busy arguing with Alexandria; she came into the room with her long sleeve brown shirt that I put on her, announcing that she now had her pants on-- which were some polka dotted shorts she picked out of the clean laundry pile on the couch….oh and she added socks as a finishing touch. So after I searched for Olivia’s jeans (finally determining that I would have to buy some at Sears before the photo shoot) and got Alexandria ready, I only had time to put my contacts in and throw on some jeans with my t shirt. No makeup, and no teeth brushing (yeah, I’m not afraid to admit it). We raced across town to Sears. On the way, Alexandria dropped her earring down the crack of the seats and then burst into tears (which is what cranky, sleepy, dramatic 7 year olds do). We get to Sears at about 10:25, the appointment is in 5 minutes. I fold the backseat down, find the earring and we rush into the store, quickly find a pair of jeans, try them on Olivia, tear the tag off and take it to the counter to purchase, run up the escalator arriving 10 minutes late for the appointment and then…….we wait.

We wait about 15 minutes for someone to even greet us. When they do, they cannot find my information, so I have to refill out the form. We wait a few more minutes and then they call us into the studio. I won’t say the name of the photographer (and I use that term loosely) but it rhymes with “Shmomique”. She says “what kind of pictures do you want with what backgrounds”, I say “ummm, some of them separate and some together, but I don’t know what backgrounds”. She stares at me to the point that I wonder if I said something weird. Then the shoot begins. First of all, she seemed pretty uncomfortable dealing with kids, secondly she obviously didn’t read the children’s names and ages that Sears made me print on the form. Then Olivia decides to change her cheery disposition of the morning and be totally…..TWO. She says “I don’t want to take my picture”. I explain that everyone wants to see her pretty pictures so could she please do it because it will be so much fun. Then Olivia steps in front of the camera and when asked to smile, she says “no, I don’t want to” and looks away. After a few minutes of this, I finally realize that “Shmomique” is out of her element in dealing with a 2 year old, so I decide if I want to get some smiling pictures of my baby I’ll have to make a fool of myself. To get Olivia to even crack a vague smile I had to wear ridiculous prop hats and make goofy faces behind “Shmomique’s” head. With each new background and pose change, Olivia pressed a little harder to get out of the photo shoot. I shamelessly bribed her with candy, gum, and a toy if she would just “look at the lady and smile”. Every once in a while “Shmomique” would peek her head out from behind the camera and mumble, “smile Livy”. Wow, thanks for your help lady.
So when we were finally done, I was told to wait at the computer table to view my pictures. We waited at least 20 minutes…….by this point all three of us had had enough. I went to the counter to see if someone, anyone could come and pull my pics up. The woman came over and we went through all the pictures. I was frustrated that the combination of an incompetent photo specialist (as Sears calls them) and a cranky 2 year old made for very few frame worthy pictures; unfortunately that didn’t stop me from spending 140.00. (big sigh)