Well Gavin managed not to fall and get bruised up before his pictures on Friday. I realized that he is falling less, I think he is finally getting his balance right while he 'walks' around. So Friday afternoon at 1 Gavin was all dressed up and looking good for his pictures. He even sat still and everything looked like it was going to turn out. One little problem, Gavin would not smile. He was a little overwhelmed by all that was going on but mostly I blame the photographer. When we were there last we had a woman who was really good. Gavin was only 3 months old but she had him smiling and took so many good pictures that we couldn't even decide which one's to get. Unfortunately we had a "snow storm" Thursdays night into Friday morning and she couldn't make it to the studio. And by snow storm I mean maybe an inch and a half that had mostly melted off by the afternoon, but every school was closed and people were acting like we had just gotten hit by a blizzard. So we got stuck with this guy who was NOT good at all in fact I think he scared Gavin. This is what he did to get 9 month old Gavin to smile- he put a pink party hat on his head, he dusted his face with a brightly colored duster and he told a chicken crossing the road joke. He was really bad. Maybe with an older child those methods may have worked but not on a nine month old. Gavin started crying when he told the joke, seriously. So this photographer has the idea for us to take a little break to see if Gavin would get in a better mood. So we went and sat in the lobby and he played with toys and was fine. While we were there a lady came in needing a copy of a picture disc and she came and sat by us. She said Gavin was good looking (not pretty) and asked how old he was. When I told her she said that her son started walking when he was nine months and it looked like Gavin was too. I said he is not quite walking yet and she said "he is so close to walking he IS walking" O.K..... Anyway this lady was really nice and she had Gavin smiling, she even found a rubber duck and handed it to him and he loved it. When we went back into the room to try again I came so close to asking this total stranger to coming in with us to make him smile. I didn't but looking back maybe I should have. So we go back into the room and Gavin is chewing down on the rubber duck and when he put it down we managed to get 1 half smiling picture and then Gavin decided he wasn't sitting anymore and crawled off. In the end we got 1 good picture and he is holding the dirty rubber duck in it. Basically an hour wasted. The picture is decent but not great and I realized today that Gavin looks a lot like Macaulay Culkin in the picture. It is eerie. We are planning to get his pictures taken again for his first birthday and I think I will make sure we get the lady photographer to do it.
Here is the 1 picture we got. This isn't how it looks exactly because ours are cropped so there is not so much black background, but you get the idea.
