Barnabas Monkeypants

Kristen is the photographer in the family. Where I barely have the ability to point the camera  and press the button so that something resembling a picture appears, she knows how to frame things and when is the right moment for the best image and when the flash is needed or not.

(Side note: The next time you talk to Kristen, tell her she has to start using the good camera that she bought a couple of years ago. It’s a fantastic piece of equipment, one that she worked very hard selling some vintage clothing to afford. I think it would produce some photos of Henry that might actually break the Internet in half.)

As much as she does an amazing job of taking pictures so we won’t forget anything about Henry’s baby-hood, we also wanted to go to a professional to get some fancy-shmancy pictures. After Kristen did a ton of research, we pared it down to a few different people. After I stopped hyperventilating seeing how much everything was going to cost, we chose a photographer in the southwest suburbs, Marmalade Photography.

We originally had our session planned for two Fridays ago, but a combination of Henry being sick and a strong chance of thunderstorms caused us to reschedule for last Friday. (It was also blazing hot that day, not so good for me and my excessive sweating. Luckily it was really pleasant three days ago, although I still sweat quite a bit.)

So on Friday, after leaving work at 2:30, I went home, packed all of Henry and my and Kristen’s various outfits, stuffed the diaper bag with every possible Henry-related item, and loaded the boy into the car, and drove down to pick Kristen up at work.

Now Friday afternoon in Chicago means one thing: traffic. I got to Kristen’s office at 4:00, and what should’ve been a 45 minute ride out to the hinterlands took more than 2 hours. By the time we finally got to what is commonly known as “the middle of nowhere” (actually, Wilmington, Illinois), we were all geared up and ready to (as the kids say) get our session on.

You’d think that after a long time strapped into a car seat with barely 20 minutes nap would’ve made Henry a crabby young lad, making everything more difficult, but, of course, nothing could’ve been further from the truth. As soon as he saw the camera pointed at him, he started to ham it up, showing off his two little teeth, smiling all the time. Marianne, the photographer, said that many parents will tell her that their kids are really laid back and smile easily and they’re no trouble at all, and yet when it comes time for the picture-taking to start, they clam up or pout.

Not our Henry. He smiled and laughed and played with the flowers and grass and dirt. (He also ate a clover flower and a bug or some sort, but eating strange things is nothing new with him, is it?)

To our amazement, when it got past 7 (what we like to call the witching hour), he didn’t want to stop. After the picture taking was finished, we headed back into the studio, and Henry crawled around, showing off his new-found talent, trying his best to impress yet another woman. (I tried to explain that she was married already, but you can’t stop a player like our son.)

Marianne gave Henry a lovely gift basket and sent us on our way home, where the ride went without a hitch and Henry slept the entire time.

This morning, a preview was posted on the Marmalade blog. If that first picture of Henry is indicative of what we can expect from the rest, I think we’re going to have to get a second mortgage to pay for the 150 pictures we’re going to have to buy.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Barnabas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.