Experience at the Photographer’s

Monday marked a momentous occasion in the life of Sam – his umbilical cord finally fell off, yay! I woke up and went to change him and there was his cute little outie. We celebrated with pictures, of course.

Someone asked me if I was going to keep it…um, GROSS! Unless other kids’ belly button cords are somehow cuter than Sam’s, I don’t know why anyone would keep that. It’s just not cute. It went out with his soiled diaper, may it rest in peace.

Yesterday we decided that it was time to get some professional pictures taken of our little guy while he’s still all curled up and newborn-ey.  I’ve been wanting some really great newborn pictures of him and found this fantastic photographer, but you definitely have to pay for what you get from him so we opted to see how JC Penney did first because I had a coupon. I really love those naked black-and-white newborn pictures where they’re all curled up on their tummies and such, and that’s what I had in mind when we got there. I knew we were in some trouble when our can’t-be-a-day-older-than-sixteen photographer saw Sam and started cooing “you’re just so cute, what are we going to do with you? What are we gonna do with you? What in the world are we going to do with you?” …..? Seriously, all of the baby cooing possibilities out there, and that was your top selection? She also suggested that we put him on a fluffy white background with a blue ribbon around him and a tag that read “our precious new delivery”. …….. we decided to go another route – I took over all posing and creative options.

After taking some shots in his batman onesie and cute little shoes, he was super fussy so I retreated to the dressing room to nurse him for a minute before doing the nudie poses. I nursed him until he dozed off, then we took off his clothes and his diaper and waited for the inevitable fountain of pee to come and go before taking him out. When that was over (caught in a diaper, of course) he decided to be all fussy again so I started nursing him for another minute. I didn’t want to have to get him used to naked freedom again so I didn’t cover him up with a diaper while I nursed, though Paul warned me that this was a bad idea. I hate it when Paul is right. After about a minute and a half there was a resounding squelch and my lap was covered in baby poop!! I thought Paul was going to have an aneurysm, he was laughing so hard. Literally on the ground, rolling around, dying of laughter.  To add insult to injury, as I was trying to wipe the poop off of my corduroy pants I all of a sudden felt very warm on my right side, right about where…yep, defecation apparently wasn’t enough for Sam, he had to top it off with a good old pee-on-mom session, too. To make it even better, he was right under my chest so it looked like I was having some sort of weird lactation. Thanks, Sam.

The pictures ended up being really cute, if not quite what I had in mind. I’ll post some of them up when we get them back in a couple of weeks, and then I can get the birth announcements out, too. Everything else is good here in our neck of the woods, just loving our cute little son and trying to get him on a better schedule. Hopefully that one won’t take too long, napping between dinner and 9:30pm then again from 2 to 5am is a little weird. I don’t know why he thinks that his room at night is more interesting to lay awake and look at than his room during the day. Here’s some more pictures for ya’ll’s enjoyment, since we have a neverending supply.

Ah, so cute!

love, mary

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