I've Been Waiting Such A Long Time...

Shoreline's picture day took place on a Tuesday and Ealy's took place two days later. The twins got their pictures back last Monday so I was sure the boys would've brought theirs home last Wednesday. Did they? Nope. The next day? Not. Andrew brought his home Tuesday of this week. Caleb? I think you can figure this one out yourself.

I always tell Andrew to stop yanking on his glasses. He is always shoving them into his face, kind of like he is trying to permanently embed them in the top part of his nose. His glasses are scary. Real bad shape. I pointed out that glasses are not supposed to hide the tops of his eyes, but instead his eyeballs should be in or around the center of the lens. Oh.

I banned JC Penney the day I attempted to get Kyle's 2 year pics done. It was the last time I ever made an appointment (the first of the day, may I add) for pictures only to wait like 55 minutes to be the first in because of some intervention or something happening in the photo rooms. Digital was new then and they were training, apparently, and the super annoying accent lady was sneezing and coughing and hacking...without even covering her mouth. Gross!! After she took a pic of my son looking at butterflies, (what the...?) it was already the last straw but then I had to wait for the pics to load. What used to take 5 minutes the old way took 20 plus minutes the new advanced way, and I finally went through the pictures on my own, decided I can do better, chose my free one and walked out. I get angry and put bans on my favorite stores all the time, but I always cave. Not this time. I have only ever been back in there to pick up my free picture. Oh, and he was so cute that day. He was wearing chocolate brown cords with a brown sweater that had an off white and red argyle print on the front. I was sweating my tush off, drove home in tears, set up a spot in the basement, took tons of pictures, went outside, took tons more pictures, got them developed and hung the free one from JCP. Darn. I forgot about it until last night at my mom's when I realized for the first time that the picture she has of Kyle with the rest of the kid's school pics is two years old. Oops.

Anyway, I decided that I was taking Kyle to school for pics this year. He practiced smiling all morning for me. It was too cute because he was practicing in the van and he would smile, then say, "oh, no not like that" and try again. Precious. If you've paid attention you'll know that his smiles are a bit peculiar. He bugs his eyes out real big and does the straight smile thing. Ridiculous. See why he was practicing? At school, he wanted nothing to do with the camera. Thank God we snuck in the back door of the Library from the office and were the first people in line. These ladies wouldn't have stood a chance later in the morning and neither would Kyle because, get this...this is # 17!! Any one with children knows that you get one chance at a good school picture, which normally means a not-so-good one ends up on your wall. Thank goodness for everyone involved that the ladies were freshly showered and freshly coffee-ed (my own vocab) because how else do you explain 17 takes on school picture day? Someone was lookin' out. For me. For the ladies. For Kyle.

This one takes the cake. I met up with the boys and Pat at the dentist after school on picture day because the boys and I had appointments. I was in the waiting room, reading a magazine, when the door opened. I looked up, saw Caleb, and the first words out of my mouth were, "What on earth happened to your hair?????" He said the spike fell down and he fixed it for his picture. I told him that I didn't spike it. Oh. That's what I got. Well, you know me. I've been stressing over it ever since. The anticipation almost killed me. To back up, Caleb had a bad mohawk when I saw him at the dentist. Standing up right down the middle of his head, all the way back, while the sides were flat down. Oh yeah. He also told me he didn't ruin his hair because there was a comb at school. Yuck. I asked him if the comb was used by everyone. Icky. He told me no. I asked him if he used it, what made him think nobody else did. He told me he didn't use it. Okay, so are you following all of this? I was a bit lost after that conversation. Was he just letting me know there was a comb there and that through osmosis his hair turned out alright? His thought on it was this...since the comb was available, it meant the ladies would've combed his hair if it looked bad...Oh, okay then.

The boys were at my mom's yesterday after school so I had to get Kyle and get back to my mom's in order to see the potential disaster. It wasn't how I remembered it, but it certainly wasn't good. My mom talked me into keeping the picture. Her response..."10 years from now this will be your favorite picture." That is very interesting. It is absolutely the utmost untruth, but let's go with it. I asked Caleb how he managed this 'do and he demonstrated for me. He held up both hands, spread his fingers wide and ran both hands through his hair. All the way back. I guess after that, I suppose the picture turned out all fine and dandy. My dad demonstrated the same thing and then I was sure Caleb's picture is perfect. Sorry, dad.

I know you may think I am making a big deal out of not-so-much, but really...my eye is drawn to the puff of hair that sticks up over his right eye and the part in the center of it all. Caleb doesn't even have a part. The 8x10, the one I will look at every day for a year, is much worse. You, I'm sure, will say it isn't bad, but I know you are laughing in your head knowing yours turned out better. Oh well. Caleb is awesome in my book so that will have to make up for this.