Christmas Card Photos: Takes Two and Three

In light of our recent disastrous {yet hilarious} Christmas card photo shoot I decided I’d try again– but this time with the mall Santa. I had my husband with me, so there would be four hands to help out. Amazingly, neither child cried when they saw Santa! Unfortunately, only one of them smiled:

Ugh. My friends said it wasn’t that bad, but do you SEE Noodle’s face? How could I send that out?

The funny thing was she was all smiles until that camera started clicking. That stinker.

So I took your advice and brought the kids outside in an attempt to capture a decent photo or two. I learned a few things.

#1: Baby Bee hates grass.

#2. And leaves.

#3. That Noodle is purposely trying to evade getting her photo taken, so skillfully she could perhaps be running from the law. Next time I’m at the post office I’m checking out those Most Wanted posters to see if that’s why she’s so camera shy.

All I wanted was one photo of Noodle and one of Bee outside in “casual” outfits. Then, one of them together in their Christmas outfits. We started by placing Bee in a pile of leaves. HE HATED IT. We moved him to the grass. HE HATED THAT MORE. Finally, our friend hoisted him in the air above her head and we got him to smile. Ta-da!

Good enough. Naptime for Bee. Next up is Noodle.

That was a workout. She refused to look at me despite all our efforts. We ended up running in circles around the yard hoping she’s stop long enough for me to catch her on camera.

Out of 362 photos, only two might be card-worthy. Here are the results– I present to you The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

First, The {sort of} Good {yet mostly unusable}.

And, The Bad.

I’m sorry to do this to you, here’s the ugly:

We tried the over-the-head pose like with Bee, but Noodle gave us reflux face. That’s the universal signal for “all done.”

Which one did I choose? I think this is the winner. She finally tripped and I caught her smile!

Don’t even get me started on the “Christmas Outfit” poses. Those didn’t happen. instead, I happened to have my camera handy when Noodle hugged Bee (without prompting!) in front of the tree. BINGO!

Yup, she’s wearing a thrift store sweater and Bee is in pajamas (and looks quite surprised). But it was a genuinely cute moment, and I’ll cherish it. I ended up also using a tackle/hug photo from Thanksgiving. Here’s the trifecta of card photos for the front…