Eliza Wears Shoes

First of all, Eliza wore shoes for the first time today! She did really well with them and looked adorable. They're size 3-6 months, so they're a little big. Still, soo cute. I can't wait 'til she can wear the vintage Nikes I wore when I was little. A few more months still on those. Also, after going to the mall today, I've decided we must win the lottery so I can afford to buy all of Eliza's clothes at Gymboree. I've never been a big fan in the past, but their Christmas dresses are so adorable and classic.

In other news, we picked up our Olan Mills portraits today. They threw a few extras in the envelope to tempt you to buy them. I didn't. When I walked away, I heard the greasy assistant lady call me something less than flattering. We hadn't called someone about her before, but we will now for sure. Also, in checking the back of the envelope the pictures came in, it says very plainly that they plan to sell our information. If we don't want our information sold, we have to write a letter to the address given. How evil is that?

Also in the news, we ran into the nurse midwife who took care of us during my pregnancy. Reportedly the doctor let her go. That's too bad. We really liked her. We wish her nothing but luck!

Thanksgiving recap and Eliza's portraits

Eliza's portrait sitting went really well. She didn't want to smile, but we got some cute poses in an adorable outfit. As promised, we had a much better experience with Sears. While we got great personal attention, there were lots of people there and they all seemed to have an 11AM appointment. I'm beginning to think double/triple booking is standard in the portrait industry. They were finishing up people who were there before, trying to deal with the people who were waiting, and trying to troubleshoot package delivery problems for someone who showed up at the last minute. I can tell you that if we weren't being so exclusively catered to, we would have had quite a wait. We were interrupted pretty much constantly while trying to pick out our pictures, so ultimately, that probably cut down on our order. All in all, though, it was a really great experience and we got really great first pictures of Eliza.

Thanksgiving, of course, didn't go according to plan at all. We didn't even get some Tofurkey. I'll pass up the details, but I will tell you that we plan to do holidays in Mayfield from now on.

Also, we have other news to share later. I'll let Brian deliver that himself. I hope you guys had a great holiday!

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!