Taking the Christmas Picture

It all started with a nice Red Sweater from Old Navy that my mom got for Zach (But I choose). He needed something nice for the winter dress holidays and already had "dress" jeans. Anyone who watches the TLC show "What Not to Wear" knows that dark jeans are dressier then regular jeans. We have dark denim for Zach in 2T but Zach has been in 18 month sizes since June for pants. Before thanksgiving, acknowledging we are going into a lot of dress occasions without nice pants, we caved and got him dark dress jeans Arizona brand from JC Penny. He's a kid that doesn't treat dress clothing different then regular cloths so I figured dress jeans are still jeans therefore easy to clean and durable. Any regular readers understand that "Zach" and "durable" belong together.

The next problem was getting him in the cloths for the purpose of the picture. He hates changing. Once he's dressed for the day it won't go well undressing and redressing him until bedtime. Just like Daddy. So I get him in the cloths and sit him on the rocking chair since getting him to stand still is impossible and he lasts two minutes. I chase him around but after a half hour concede and back into regular cloths it is. My dad has a fancier digital camera then me so he offered to help.

We chose a good day, dress him nice, and got him in a chair. He's not smiling and keeps hiding behind a couch pillow. That's when I decided to get him a gift bag to hold. There he is with a bag on a different chair without pillows and we finally get the smiley dimply shot that we used. The next hassle was the picture with my parent's since that amounted to too many pictures in one day. On family dinner night of that week we went early and got one with Grandma and Pop for their card.

This year's Christmas picture

It was a very different experience then last year when I leaned him against the wrapped gifts and surrounded him with other wrapped gifts so he wouldn't fall over. At 6 months it was a lot easier to get a picture without the whoosh lines behind him as he runs away. It was almost funny dressing him then for my parent's Christmas picture though. My mom wanted him to wear what my brother wore for his first Christmas picture. As my dad said at the time about the 25 year old outfit "I refuse to have my picture taken with him in that. It's outdated. It was outdated 25 years ago." Short sleeves and shorts navy velvet ugly thing. However, it was important to my mom so the compromise was she takes pictures of just her and him with him in that then we changed him for the Grandparent picture. He looked like, "Mommy, get my out of this thing!" but it's still one of her favorite pictures of them together. The relief on his face after he was changed was priceless.




Last year's Christmas picture

It doesn't matter how old he is, those dimples are irresistible. The good news is he apparently isn't big on the Christmas cookies.