Column: Don’t Mind the Mess – One picture is worth a thousand screams

Looking back, it seemed simple enough: dress two little kids in their Sunday best and drag them to the mall for pictures. How hard could that be?

One store was offering a baby photo special, with a “professional” photographer, a Nikon, and a roll of pretty backdrops. You paid a small sitting fee, and when the pictures were ready, they offered you the $200 package with the best poses of your little sunshine – or you could pay the bargain price for the ones where your wee one was scowling, screaming, or staring off into space.

This was long before cell phones allowed us to capture every second of our children’s lives in real time. When my first two kids were little, we had a cheap camera that used film. No editing features back then. You sent the film away to be developed and crossed your fingers that at least six out of the 24 photos wouldn’t be blurry or feature someone with their finger up their nose.

By the time I wrestled my toddler out of his car seat and hauled him, his baby sister, and a 50-pound diaper bag, into the mall, I was exhausted. I convinced myself it would all be worth it.

I was never a “Fisher Price Mom.” I didn’t own every educational gadget on the market. By the time baby number three came along, you realize they prefer rooting through your cupboards to playing with molded plastic anyway. My kids didn’t wear brand name clothes unless I found them at garage sales. I didn’t record every grunt, sigh, and movement in a baby book. My friends and I didn’t spend our precious time away from our charges discussing which diapers offered the best leak control.

And I wasn’t very consistent with taking photos. While I have a box filled with snapshots that I plan to organize at some point before the good Lord takes me home, my kids were lucky if there was a professional shot of them before they started Kindergarten.

So, there we were, with about 20 women and their own uncomfortably dressed, hyperactive progeny still in line ahead of me. After an hour of frantically bouncing a screaming, 15-pound package of fat, dimples, and drool on one hip, I needed a chiropractor. My two-year-old was off somewhere in the store; I could hear him softly crooning Barney songs while items crashed to the floor. I ignored the hostile glares from the clerks; nothing short of an F5 tornado was going to make me relinquish my spot in line.

The lady behind me smiled sweetly. She was one of those quiet talkers, the kind that never raise their voice to their kids. Her lips kept moving, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I finally made out the words: “Can we trade places?” I shifted my daughter’s wet bottom to my other hip, brushed the vomit off my shoulder, and mouthed the words: “No way.”

My son appeared at my side, holding a can of deodorant and a package of men’s briefs like they were his only earthly treasures.

I knew I had a fight ahead of me. I had visions of his portrait on my wall with the items still clutched in his chubby hands. Adoring relatives would comment: “Those are odd props.”

After prying them from his hands, we were up next. I told the young photographer that we were too water-logged and burnt out to even hope for smiles. “Just take the picture before the screaming starts,” I pleaded. He gave me a condescending, “Just let me do my job” shrug.

Puppets and squeaky toys were hauled out in desperation, but in the end, all we could get were blank, teary-eyed stares. I look at the photos now, all these years later, and marvel at how cute they were, and I remember that tired, crazy woman, still holding a can of deodorant and a pair of men’s briefs, begging them to smile.