The Family Photo
There was a time I believed the only professional family photos gracing my walls would be our wedding photos. This belief probably stemmed from the fact that until 2 minutes ago, my parents had the family photo from my sophomore year of high school hanging over the fireplace. But then I got knocked up and a whole new world opened up before me – maternity photos, newborn photos, first year photo packages. . .the options were endless! As were the regrets.
I told the photographer before we started that this session was probably going to be a disaster. This was based on that fact that previous photo sessions had been a disaster – Jesse was ready to be done before we started, Boogs was uncooperative, our original photographer ghosted on us. But, as people like to tell you about the newborn days, I looked back at a year ago and told myself it hadn’t really been all that horrible and booked a family photo session (still not far enough out to tell myself that about the newborn days so don’t even bother asking when I’m having another kid).
A week or so before our session I told Jesse he needed to figure out what he was going to wear because I was not going to deal with his day of “I have nothing to wear” dramatics. The night before our session I asked him what he was wearing and he told me, “I’ll find something tomorrow.” And that’s when it all started to unravel.
5 hours before the session we were at Clay Terrace walking past every single store that sells men’s clothing without actually going in. This went on for several hours before Jesse declared there was nothing (we’d gone into Orvis to look at the fly fishing stuff and that was it), and we went home. I put Boogs down for a nap, told Jesse to take a nap, and started getting ready.
When both boys woke up, I poured a glass of wine and braced myself. While Boogs went into turd mode, Jesse went into nothing to wear mode, leaving me to add wine cellar to the list of must haves for the next house. As he was muttering under his breath about having no clothes, I was telling him to just forget it; I’d call the photographer and cancel the whole thing. He told me to quit being ridiculous which always gets me good and fired up and round we went for another 5 minutes before he finally landed on something to wear (which was exactly what I knew he was going to wear from the beginning).
Jesse then spent the entire 30 minutes we had left before we had to leave getting ready while I tried to get wrangle Boogser. There was ironing, there was pants swapping, there was something with the hair; I don’t really know what that man does but damn it takes awhile. With about 2 minutes to spare he asked me if I was going to finish getting dressed. I’ll let you guess how that went.
I tell you all this so a) you understand the disaster behind the scenes, but mostly b) so I can look back at this post next year and remember exactly how much wine I’m going to need.
Jeanne Witt Photography is our miracle worker. 10 out of 10 would eat here again.
Soybeans, Too 