The Photo Shoot

Oh boy, friends. This is epic.

Well. . . I take that back. I think for normal, non-possessed children, this would be classified as 'epic'. But for Hannah, it's kind of more like 'run of the mill'.

I was never able to get professional pictures taken with Hannah when she was a newborn, and so I decided to get some done now {she turned 3 months on February 29th}. A sweet girl named Jena just moved into my ward {with her darling family} and she does photography for a very, very reasonable price {if you're in the market for a photographer, let me know and I'll shoot you her contact info}.

"Sweet!" I thought. "This will be the perfect opportunity. I'll finally have some cute pictures like this.":

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Hannah is usually the happiest right after she wakes up in the morning, so I scheduled the shoot for 9:00 a.m. this morning. She was her smiley self while I was getting her ready and gathering a million cute outfits to take. She didn't even cry while I buckled her into her car seat, and that's pretty darn rare. She usually acts like she's being brutally murdered whenever I buckle her in.

We got to Jena's house just as she was finishing setting up her studio. All was well. All continued to be well while we snapped a couple poses. I then made the mistake of scooting from Hannah's peripheral vision to be behind the photographer. My intention was to get Hannah to smile once she saw me.

Um. . . that didn't happen.

I saw her eyes swivel from the camera to my face and she BURST into tears. You have to understand that Hannah doesn't whimper and then start to cry. She goes from 'fine and dandy' to 'my world is careening out of control' in 2 seconds. Literally.

Fast forward to 30 minutes and every-known-trick-in-the-book later and Hannah was still freaking out. I did everything I normally do that calms her down, but she wasn't having it. When I finally got her to simmer down for a couple minutes, I tried laying her back down in the basket for some more pictures and she turned purple within another 3 seconds.

Jena's poor little 11 month old baby boy was quite traumatized, I think. Every time I got close to him with my wailing offspring, he would start to whimper. I don't blame him. I would, too.

We eventually decided to reschedule and I buckled Hannah back into her car seat. Naturally, she resorted back to her scream of murder while I snapped her in and puffed out her chest so I couldn't buckle up the harness thingy. What a little punk. As soon as I got her bundled up in her car seat blankie, though, she quieted up. By the time I was in the car, she was zonked out.

It's hard work screaming like you're being abducted by aliens for 35 minutes, don'tcha know?

So, basically, instead of the pictures I had in mind, I would have ended up with something like this had we decided to continue:

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Plus a puffy purple vein in Hannah's left eyelid that pops out when she's upset; big crocodile tears; and a beet red face. 

Now I can hear her filling up her diaper with a super special surprise for mamma. 

Awesome. :)

I am so excited, I can hardly stand it.