A New Way To Fight

Ah, summer... So much fun in so many ways, but so much time... together.  I like to try to insist my three boys NEVER fight or bicker, but somehow, I seem to be unsuccessful in my dream of peace and quiet so far...

Don't get me wrong, my boys are buds.  For the most part, they just love having each other around.  They share a lot of the same interests and when forced to choose between playing together more civilly or separating, they always choose to stay together.

But they bicker.  They push each other's buttons.  They pester.  Today, Ben even proclaimed, "Mom, one of the things that steals my joy is when Mitchell pesters me!  And also not being able to go to the pool..."

I thought I had seen all the ways they get at each other, but this afternoon, I witnessed a new one: they fought through drawing pictures.

As I came into the kitchen, they were right in the middle of a big fight with, yes, pictures!  Ben was drawing Mitchell crashing in his spaceship, to which Mitchell responded by scribbling Ben out of his picture.  Ben retaliated by putting a dress on Mitchell, which really got Mitchell mad so he drew dog poop on Ben's head.  Ben made a club list that he pointed out did NOT have Mitchell's name on it.  Mitchell can't write very well yet, so he just wrote Ben's name and scribbled all over it.

This went on for a while until Mitchell was drawing on Ben's arm and then ended up knocked to the floor.

Ah, summer... Guess we'll go to the pool after all!

Deja Vu

Sometimes, when I look at a picture of one of my little dudes, I get a feeling I have seen that very picture before...

Posing With Pumpkins

Why is it that we all want to take pictures of our kids with, on, or around pumpkins?  This time of year rolls around and we all travel as far as we need to to make our kids pose with this big, orange vegetable.  I suppose if there was such thing as a zucchini patch, we'd flock to that as well?

I realize the draw of these places is not just the pumpkins, but the family fun to be had there, but still, some of the poses I have seen (and taken pictures of myself!) of a kid and a pumpkin crack me up.  Nothing says "frame-worthy" like a picture of a kid on a giant vegetable.  I love it when parents (mothers mostly, I imagine) set up a whole bed of sorts amongst the pumpkins, complete with blankets and stuffed animals, for their infant to be properly posed and photographed.  I've also noticed that a lot of moms actually dress there kids like a pumpkin for these pictures too - kind of a "Where's Waldo" scenario, I suppose.  

I sometimes imagine what parents are thinking/saying as they scramble around the pumpkin patch, taking pictures of the produce: 

"Hey Ben, go hug that pumpkin!" 

"Ben, see if you can put it on top of your head!"  

"Matt, put Jack between those two pumpkins and then put one on his lap too so he can't get up so I can take his picture!"  

"Mitchell, peek out at me from behind that pile of pumpkins!"  

"Jack just fell down in between two pumpkins and is stuck with his legs in the air.  Can you reposition him and make him stop crying, please?  I haven't gotten the shot yet!"  

"Can't you all just sit and smile in the pumpkins for a few seconds while I take your picture?" "Hurry, take the picture of Baby Jack on top of this pile of gourds before he and the whole pile topple over!" 

"Honey, go ask that lady if she'll take a picture of us kissing while I hold a pumpkin!"  

"What do you mean, 'that's not a very safe place to put him,' it'll look great if he can just stay put!" 

"These pumpkins all look the same!  How do I decide which one to take a picture of!" 

Like I said, I am as guilty as the rest of you for these silly pictures, to the point of being disappointed in myself for not ending up with a picture worth framing somewhere in my house.  When I really think about it, how important is it in the end to have pumpkins in my pictures which are displayed all year 'round?  Not very.

Our Little Photo Shoot

I woke up with a vision of how my morning was going to go.  I needed some new pictures of all the boys together so I had a photo shoot planned for us all.  I gave it a lot of thought and came up with some different places around the house we could shoot.  I did the laundry so the boys would have some good neutral clothes to wear.  I charged my camera batteries.  I even went so far as to schedule ahead of time exactly what our morning would look like so that I could maximize my time (those of you who know me know I am not a big scheduler.)

Well, the best of plans sometimes don't work out.  The boys were fabulous (aided by plenty of lollipops and popsicles) and tried their hardest to cooperate, but I was having a tough time with lighting and poses and other challenges an amateur photographer struggles with.  After a while, I gave up on my dream of beautiful pictures and perfectly "candid" poses, and let the boys take over a bit.  I let them goof around a bit more and pick their own poses and locations and it turned the whole shoot around!  I got some great pics of my boys being boys!  

Let this be a lesson to me:  stick with what works for us - strict structure has never been our way in most areas, so why attempt it with pictures?  When I think about it now, a picture of all three boys sitting perfectly still, all looking at the camera and smiling perfectly would seem...fake.  When do we ever sit like that?