Grace's One Year Picture Failure and then SUCCESS!

So, as you know, I have usually had the kids pictures taken at Portrait Innovations in town. It's fast, not expensive, and they give you the pictures the day you take them. We always have good luck with them and for studio pictures, we are always pleased. For Atticus, I took him at 2,3,4,6,8,11, and 12 months to have his picture taken. 1 and 2 were really just practice because he didn't start smiling until 3 months. Then, it seemed like we had lots of holidays that came and we just had to have his picture made (and when I say we, I mean just me - Vic wasn't sold on this necessity). And, this doesn't include the Erwin Family portrait we had made either. Whew - lots of pictures. But, with Grace, I thought I could handle just doing newborn, 3, 6, 9 and 12 month pictures. So, we did all of those. However, we only did 3 and 6 month pictures at Portrait Innovations and she actually did great! So, in Grace's defense for what I am about to tell you, she had little experience. I will take all the blame.

So the week of her birthday, GG and I were excited to take her in for the big one year portraits. And, of course, I was anxiously awaiting to see the results to choose my one year canvas for my house that I want of each of my children! We had decided we would bring three outfits - a sassy one with a feather bow and lots of pearls, a sweet summer one and then her cupcake outfit that GG made for her birthday party. Well, it didn't matter what outfit she had on, she decided not to cooperate. We started with the pearl and pink outfit and actually got about 2 good pictures before she started crying. From that point on, she cried and cried and could not be consoled. We gave her goldfish, we held her, we laughed and jumped and sang to her to try to make her laugh or smile, we gave her breaks, we gave her the paci, we put Atticus in shots with her. Nothing worked. She would NOT settle down and relax. If I held her in my arms, we could have gotten fabulous pictures. But, I didn't want to be in those picture - I just wanted Grace in them of course. Even Atticus tried to make her laugh and actually did a good job which is why we got 2 sweet pictures but then he decided he was bored with that and would rather play the Ipad, so we lost his help rather quickly. It was just not good. So, I decided she must be tired and that maybe if we tried again the next day at a different time of day when I was sure she was not sleepy, we would have better luck. So, we tried again the following day. Still no success. It was better, but not great. She took some okay pictures with Atticus by her side, but still had tears and then when she was on her own, she just stayed unhappy. We got through about 50 shots or so to make the photographer happy and chose a few to bring home, but they weren't great. And we weren't even able to have the two from the day before because they require that they take at least 50 shots to consider it a session. So, those two precious ones were gone. So, instead of getting beautiful professional studio shots, I decided to just take a few of my own. I would have loved to have Mary here to do them for me. But, I got some that will work and I can still have my canvas! You can see below that she started off happy with Atticus and then decided this was terrible and then got semi-content (but with tear stained face) and then just got mad. By the end, they were trying tricks of covering me with a black blanket so I could hold her so maybe she would be happy. Didn't work. But, you can catch a glimpse of the black monster holding her in that last shot. Here are the studio and "outside my house" results: