SAY CHEESE

Last week we had scheduled our girls' "summer" pictures (summer being a relative term in these parts), but Marta ran into the bookshelves and bruised her face so I rescheduled for this week. When it happened I thought it was a good thing I changed the date, because they were antsy and wild all day, and wouldn't have been very good company to the photographer.

Turns out it may just be Wednesdays in general that they're naughty, because we made quite a show of "Auditions for Supernanny" today.

Marta was well-rested and had had a snack and I did all the right things beforehand, like sing in the car on the ride over and praise their good manners and la-dee-da. We arrived and Berit hopped onto the platform posing and vogueing and kind of creeping me out, what with all of the leg-crossing and propping her chin on her fists without any sort of prompting. Where did she learn this? We don't practice "Going To The Photographer" at home.

Maybe it didn't bother me as much as relieve me of my motherly duties to her during the shoot, since Marta was running around the studio yelling like a banshee. When we tried to pull her in for a shot with B, she screamed and pushed Berit away. When we tried to get her to smile she yelled. When we tried to get her to SIT DOWN, she leapt off of the platform. The photographer took 200 pictures and we think we may have gotten one or two good ones of Marta. I spent the first five minutes swearing to him that my child is usually adorably clever and silly, then gave up and did acrobatics trying to make her smile.

Afterwards Trevor met up with us at the Bob-In Again for dinner, where we apparently became the parents who don't watch their children, bribe their children and let their children continually hurt themselves, because Berit accidentally (though it didn't exactly look that way) hit Marta in the face with her hula hoop, Marta tripped on her hula hoop while Trevor was ordering and I was wiping off the table and fell flat on her back, I took Marta outside to calm her down (in the 50-degree weather, with summer clothes on from the photo shoot), we let her eat chips and french fries with her dinner, she threw her food, she screamed at the table, then she had ice cream. All while they both wore their fancy, IRONED linen shirts and cute capris from the earlier debacle. I caught one grandmotherly looking women glaring at me as if to say, "Maybe if you spent a little more time with your children and a little less time buying them expensive clothes they'd behave for you." I very nearly announced to the whole restaurant that the shirts were on sale and that I usually shop for them at Target but we had just come from what I had hoped would be a priceless photo shoot and yes, I knew that feeding them fries, chips and ice cream was probably part of the problem but was at my wit's end and... well, you get the picture. 

At home, Marta yelped until I put her to bed, where she fussed and finally said, "Thank you Daddy, thank you Mommy," and fell promptly asleep. And she is forgiven.