This morning we went to the Target Portrait Studio to get Alethea’s one year photos taken.  I know I’m over a month past her birthday, but I’ve been putting off scheduling an appointment because Alethea has had one bruise after another on her forehead and I was hoping for bruise-free photos.  Finally I just decided that I’d better schedule the sitting and make the best of it before we were taking 20 month photos instead and what do you know, the past few days have been bruise-free and things were looking promising for this morning’s photo shoot.  So far, so good…

Now just have to get her dressed and out the door…

I’m not sure how she knows, but Alethea always seems to sense when I most need her to cooperate and get going quickly and that is always when she is the most difficult.  She did not want to get dressed.  She wanted to read books.  We compromised with me putting her clothes on while she stood next to her shelf and pulled all the books off.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.

The diaper cover went on okay, but as I pull the dress over her head, she looses her balance and ‘whack’ her forehead smacks the bookcase.  As I groan, she bursts into tears and I contemplate whether to call off the whole thing.  But she’ll never be a one-year-old again, so we finish getting ready and run out the door.

After a frustrating photo shoot that included Alethea crying whenever we tried to get her to sit on the floor, her throwing the letter “o” (part of the word “one”) across the room multiple times, and generally just being difficult, we got a handful of good pictures and I think I actually heard the photographer sigh with relief when we left.

Not really.  The photographer was very professional, but after Alethea screaming for the last half of her infant pictures and now this at her one-year set, we may end up on some sort of Target Portrait Studio black list.

Any chance she’ll be more cooperative at two years?  One can only hope.