Christmas Card Blues

I had an image of the kids under the beautiful Christmas tree. Nicky was wearing her Christmas dress and her hair was perfectly ribboned and coiffed. Jeff had gelled Andy's hair. He was handsomely dressed in a Christmas suit. I'd wrapped a box in shiny red and green Christmas paper and the kids were smiling as if they'd just opened the box and were surprised to find baby Christian inside. Baby C, sitting in the box, was wearing his Santa suit and looked straight toward my waiting camera; his adorable cheeks and skin framed his dark wide eyes.

I loved this image and it was to be this year's Christmas card picture. I began to wrap my prop box in preparation for the photo session. Suddenly, the children were upon me and my wrapping supplies. First the wrapping paper rolls were swords and I heard the cardboard crackle and the paper rip against "monsters" in all the closets. After some yelling to bring the rolls back, I placated them with their own sheets of wrapping paper to wrap fake presents. For Andy, his gift was a couple of trains from the train table. Nicky needed most of the roll for her project which turned out to be the huge rocking horse, Medallion. When I wouldn't give her all the paper she needed, she threw a huge fit and screamed at me until I relented. They asked for tape for their crumpled paper wrapped gifts until all of it was gone. They then pretended to sleep and opened the gifts in a millisecond and were back to bugging me for more tape and paper. Meanwhile, I was suddenly in a hurry and crappily wrapped my prop box. I thought it might still work if the kids turned out cute enough for people not to look too closely at the gift box.

I told the kids to go dress up. Andy didn't want to wear what I'd chosen for him and Nicky was so upset he wasn't cooperating, she grabbed him and scratched him down the chest. I felt myself getting tired and told them we weren't doing the pictures anymore. They both cried and screamed.

I needed to lighten my mood so as not kill them. I imagined up a new Christmas card picture. I told them the photography session would take place immediately on the stairway (the only clean place in the house today). No changing or primping was necessary. Everyone would be as is. They were so excited they happily posed and I snapped an unfortunate looking array of pictures of the ragamuffins. I laughed so hard thinking of how I would use it for my Christmas card. Why, after all, should we be pretending we're something we're not around here? (Which would be well rested and put together.) Andy puts on his own clothes and they are usually mismatching, season inappropriate, backwards, and inside out. Baby C is too little to complain that his green socks don't go with the blue choo choo outfit...but of course he'd be the only one that wouldn't notice.
As always, Nicky is good at disguising the fact that she looked like the above before she chose to look like the below.
I might defer Christmas cards to next year. Or, I might be driven to insanity and send out cards using the photos I took tonight.