Christmas Portrait

Last night we took Eliza to have a Christmas portrait taken. The original idea was to have some family portraits taken, but money's tight and we had a coupon for free baby portraits. You wouldn't believe the nightmare that experience was.

After debating whether we should keep the baby's appointment at Olan Mills or switch to Sears portrait studio, we opted for Olan Mills. When we arrived, they had a very large family in front of us and a crying baby in the studio having her picture taken. We had a very unsavory-looking photograher being assisted by two greasy-haired girls in dirty sweatpants. We were informed that the family in front of us were running late so we'd have to wait.

We sat in the studio while the photographer photographed the screaming baby and sold portrait packages to the waiting family (who bought every possible pose). In the meantime, Eliza went from baby, camera-ready to extremely hungry demon baby. When the baby begins to look like Bill O'Reilly, it's time to feed her. At that point, we'd been sitting there for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, the lady with the screaming baby disappeared before she even had a chance to look at her pictures.

Finally, after we sat for an hour, waited and listened to the ridiculous banter between her crack assisting team (actual dialogue: "I think misspelled VOID!"), watched the photographer stop in the middle of everything else to give a family directions over the phone, fed the baby, and took down the customer service number so we can report thist nuttiness, it was Eliza's turn. She put her in one pose and got a fairly cute picture. Eliza didn't look happy, but she wasn't crying. Perfect. Then we had to stop so she could give phone directions again. Then she put Eliza on her tummy and Eliza immediately started crying. She tried to get her calm for about 30 seconds and then looked at us and said "do you want to reschedule?". At that point, we were done. We ordered our free pictures from the first pose and then left.

What a nightmare!