Picture Perfect

Yesterday was the worst day of 2012.  How so, you ask?  It was the day I designated "Christmas Card Picture Day" at the McCallie house.  Within the last ten months, I've gotten two nice, news lenses for my camera.  I got both lenses after seeing the incredible pictures my brother was taking.  He helped Mike find them to give to me as gifts.  There was just one thing that Mike didn't purchase when he got me these lenses.  Talent.  The reason my brother's pictures are so good is that he has an eye and a talent for picture taking.  He's also one of those photographers who frequently adjusts shutter speed and changes his white balance and things of that nature.  He understands his camera and what it can do.  I just point and click.  With seemingly disastrous results.

But it wasn't just the quality that was lacking.  Oh, it was lacking alright.  I'll get to that in a minute.  The bigger issue was that by the time it was all over, I wanted to disown my children.  If you read my last post, you saw me gushing over them and trying to bottle their enthusiasm.  If their enthusiasm had been in a bottle yesterday, I would have thrown it onto the pavement so it would shatter into millions of teeny, tiny little pieces.  If you read that post, you know I love them dearly.  But I wasn't feeling the love yesterday.  AT ALL.

I thought I had planned it perfectly.  It was a gorgeous day.  Sunny.  Fall colors bursting all around us.  I had both of them shower so they'd have nice, clean hair.  I had done the laundry earlier in the day so their little outfits were clean, wrinkle-free and coordinated.  I had even scouted out a location in the neighborhood.  Pretty wildflowers.  Fall leaves in the background.  A couple of waterfalls.  Very picturesque.  What could possibly go wrong?  Well, for starters, the girls and I showed up.  It pretty much went downhill after that.

In an effort to avoid an ugly incident, I told the girls before we left that I had remembered last year's photo shoot and how badly it went and that my expectation was they this year's would be different.  Well, it was different.  It was actually worse.  Last year, Kate goofed off the whole time and made silly faces every time the photographer tried to take a nice shot.   I was getting so angry with her because her sister was always perfectly posed with a sweet smile.  If Kate had just cooperated, we could have been done in 15 minutes.  But no, she is exactly like I was as a kid so she was intent on ruining every shot with an idiotic expression on her face.  I know that I must have threatened her with spankings at least four times during that hour-long shoot.  I was certainly embarrassed by her ridiculous behavior but was also embarrassed by my own in front of the photographer.  It was just all so stressful.  With photo shoots, you get whatever you get.  You only have the time the photographer is present to get whatever pictures you're going to get.  And during the time she was there, Kate was acting like she had eaten 216 doughnuts shortly before the girl arrived to take the pictures.  I decided during that experience that I would be the one to take the pictures for the next year's card.

So, here we were, roughly a year later.  I was actually confident when we drove up to our scenic location - stupidly confident it turns out.  I had explained my expectations and felt as though they clearly understood what kind of behavior I was looking for.  They would be the perfect little children I was raising and obey my orders with and diligence and reverence.  Once we got out of the vehicle however, Kate immediately ran off almost completely out of earshot.  I hadn't even gotten the camera out of my car and she had already spazzed out.  And Meg was pretty much jammed up my rear end - a tactic she has adopted to try and win favor with me if her sister is misbehaving. 

"I stayed with you, Mama, isn't that so good?" 

"Kate ran off but I did what you asked me to do, right, Mama?"

Yes, you little brown-noser, that's correct.  Anyway, I called after Kate and demanded she come back up to a nice spot in front of some flowers.  She did, so I felt myself calming down.  She walked right up to Meg and I asked them to look natural.  Well, of course, they don't know what that means - how to look "natural".  Every time you take a child's picture they are begged to smile so they don't know how to stand there and not have a phony grin plastered across their face.

I asked for a few different poses.

Hold Hands. 
Goes reasonably well.  They can do that.  Whew!

Put your arms around each other.
Kate puts Meg in a stranglehold.  Meg screams at her sister.  I scream at Kate.

Sit down back-to-back.
That means don't face each other.
That means looks away from each other and touch backs.
They finally get the pose, but since both kids have been cursed with my deplorable posture, they are both completely slumped over their legs.

Straight backs!
Kate slumps further.

Tall backs like in ballet.
Meg raises her shoulders as though she's in a Broadway musical having to over-emote the act of shrugging.  At the same time, her eyes get really wide and her eyebrows almost touch the top of her hairline.

Relax and just kind of lean your backs into each other.
Kate flops back onto Meg so that Meg's chin is in the mulch.

I decided to try a new location.  Every time I found a nice spot, the sun was such that it was directly in their eyes if they had their backs to some nice background scenery.  I tried the ol' keep-your-eyes-closed-until-I-count-to-three-and-then-open-them-and-smile routine, but you can just imagine how those shots turned out.

I found a shady place and made a couple of adjustments to my camera so the pictures wouldn't be too dark.  We tried the back-to-back thing again (because apparently I like chaos), this time with better results.  I think I only had to yell 5-6 times (in the spirit of the holidays...).  The main problem with this particular set-up was the precision of my lens.  I didn't really notice it until I got home and uploaded the shots to my computer, but there were several weeds in the area.  One in particular was positioned right in the foreground of the shot.  Therefore, I have 17 pictures of this perfectly crisp tall, gangly weed with my two fuzzy children in the background.  The lens captured every crease and dew drop of that weed.  It's really quite lovely.  It's just not quite what I had in mind for our Christmas card.  ("Weed" wish you a merry Christmas anyone?)

After my inadvertent nature shoot, we moved to an area on some nice big rocks with the girls' backs to a waterfall.  By this time, we had probably been at this thing for at least 30-45 minutes so the girls were really past their threshold for good behavior.  I can't really blame them.  I guess I should say that I shouldn't really blame them.  To say I "cant" blame them gives off the impression that I didn't blame them which I absolutely did.

Kate started up with her crazy faces again and so an eager-to-please Meg joined right in (I guess this time she was eager to please Kate and not her Mama).  When they would finally calm down, something would happen like Kate would step in front of Meg accidentally or Meg would sneeze.  At no point were both girls looking in the same direction at the same time with both eyes open and a decent expression on their face.  If ever there was a time for a Christmas miracle, this was it.

Also hindering this process was the fact that somehow between last year's shoot and this one, Meg has forgotten how to smile.  Meg is actually quite photogenic.  But, I have no idea what she was trying to accomplish yesterday.  It was like a scared robot doing an impression of Jack Nicholson's "Joker".  She was completely stiff and unnatural.  She looked ridiculous.  So on the off chance that Kate actually had a nice expression on her face instead of her best Phyllis Diller impression, Meg looked like a deer in headlights.  A drunk deer.

At the end of it all, none of these things ended up mattering.  The quality of the pictures I took just wasn't up to par.  I mentioned my encounter with the weed, but I also never did get my settings right for the light I was in.  I was so annoyed when I uploaded the images to my computer because even if I had gotten one decent shot (I didn't), I'd have to Photoshop the crap out of it to make it usable.  So on top of being angry with my rambunctious children, I was depressed that I have these nice lenses and no immediate talent for using them.  I do have an appointment with a photographer on December 2nd, but I was hoping to be done with my cards by then.  I guess now she will have to witness me losing my patience all over again just as she did last year.  This means, of course, that my Christmas cards will go out late this year since I likely won't even have proofs back until at least a week after that.  So, until then, please enjoy some of my favorites from yesterday. 

*I deleted the glorious shots of the weed before I had the idea to turn this into a post, so you won't get to experience the beauty and splendor that I captured.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

God bless us everyone.

My Baby Is Turning Five

My baby is turning five.  My BABY.  My younger daughter.  My youngEST child - as there will be no more to follow.  This is the last year that one of my children only needs one hand to count her age.  That's kind of monumental.  A milestone.  A reason to celebrate and reflect.  And a reason to mourn the passing of youth.  A few more years and she will be an insolent, angst-and-acne-riddled teen who is totally embarrassed by my existence.

I have a journal I've been keeping for five years now.  I'm slow at updating it, so I'm still working out of the same notebook, but the purpose of it is to share with my girls what is was like to be their mother in the early years.  They are likely to be a mother one day themselves and I wanted them to know that it's more than just baby showers and sweet, posed pictures.  There is fear; there is anxiety. There is the knowledge that you have no idea what you are doing.  There is self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy.  All of these are normal.  There is also elation.  Joy.  Love in it's simplest and purest form.  Fierce protectiveness.  Pride.  Total selflessness.  Oh, and guilt.  Lots of guilt.  It even has a name - "Mommy Guilt".  But, mostly there's joy. 

The reason I started keeping a journal (as opposed to "journaling" which is not a word but is actually a noun that we as a society seem to have found acceptable  turning into a verb) was because after my Meglet was born, I went through a period of profound post-partum depression.  I've been vocal about it with those who know me and have reached out to a couple of people who don't know me at all to try and help them through what for me was the worst time in my life.

I'm vocal about my experience with post-partum depression for a couple of reasons.  One, I think far more women experience it than you'd think.  Two, I still suffer from it.  I'll explain what I mean by that in just a minute.  Plus, so many people helped me and were there for me that I feel like it's my job now to return the favor.  If I can help someone in the way I was helped through it, then that's absolutely what I need to do.  When I first realized that I was suffering, I knew I needed to get past it, so I talked about it with people.  I was shocked by the number of people who admitted that they "probably" had dealt with it too but never sought help.  Some of those people I met in therapy when they were trying to get sober after years of drinking away their depression.

When I say I still suffer from it, what I mean is that I am still very aware of what I went through.  I think about it every singe day.  The therapist I saw when I was going through all of it told me she thought I had post-traumatic stress disorder - with the trauma for me being the PPD I went through.   I have a lot of guilt that the first several months of Meg's life were, for me, not filled with joy.  Sure, there was a deep love that I knew was there, but it was buried deep under other feelings.  Feelings of wanting to run away.  Feelings of regret that I'd "given up my life" in order to have kids.  In my moments of clarity (that sadly, were rare during those lonely months), I knew I loved my babies.  But I was terrified.  Terrified that my life was only going to be a series of doctor's appointments and birthday parties.  I could not have imagined what I would feel five years later.

After copius amounts of research on post- partum depression, therapy, anti-depressants and most importantly, time, I evolved into the mother I am today.  (If that terrifies you, just know I used to be much worse than I am now!)  And I go back though my journal periodically and can see the sun slowly begin peeking through the clouds.  I see the weight being lifted over the period of several months through several entries.  I see myself as I come back to life.  It's an interesting thing to read to see how motherhood, and I, have evolved over time.  Here is an excerpt from my last journal entry dated 9/30/2012.  I share it now in hopes that perhaps you can relate to it in some way.

Tonight on the eve of Meg's 5th birthday, I want to reflect on her for a bit.  Her birth is, of course, the reason this journal exists.  That time was fraught with stress, anxiety, fear, guilt and yes, love.  The love was always there of course, but the post-partum depression was just in the foreground for a while.  My how things have changed...

I've said (and written) several times what an enormous impact PPD had on my life.  It does to this day because, as a mother, you don't easily forget how awful it is to know that you once had thoughts that you didn't want your babies.  I hope I'll be able to explain it to them in such a way that they know that those feelings weren't real and they weren't me.  It was real, of course - it happened and there's no denying that.  But those feelings were not what was truly in my heart and soul and what remains there today.

I look at little Meg and she is pure joy.  She is joy in the sense that she is full of joy herself, and bounces and hops everywhere she goes.  She also brings joy to others - to Mike, Kate and me for sure.  She cracks us up every single day!  How can you not smile when you look at that happy little round, freckled face?   Tomorrow will mark five years that she has been in our lives.  I can't believe my baby is FIVE!  And her precious sister is approaching SEVEN.  That sounds so much older somehow than six.  Time is passing so quickly.  Too quickly.

When I was first dealing with PPD after Meg's birth, time couldn't pass quickly enough.  Mike couldn't return from work fast enough.  I couldn't get back to work and off of maternity leave fast enough.  I lived for their nap time and any other time I didn't feel smothered by them.  It was such a sad and debilitating time.  What's really sad about it is that it is supposed to be such a joyous time.  And yet, I felt stuck.  In the five years that passed since the start of my journal, I went from praying that they would hurry and grow up to acknowledging that "time is passing too quickly".  The excerpt continues:

I want to find a way to bottle their joy and innocence.  Their energy and curiosity.  Their purity and imagination - because we all know how disappointing it can be as you learn and come to understand the realities of the world we live in.  There is suffering and loss.  Sadness and anger.  Helplessness and evil. Self-absorption and loneliness.  There is squandered potential and tragedy.  Both girls are already aware that things "aren't fair".   Of course, it's "not fair" to Kate that Meg has a birthday tomorrow.  Just as it won't be "fair" to Meg when Kate's birthday rolls around in January.  It's "not fair" that Kate has to go to school five days a week and Meg only goes three.  It's totally "not fair" that Meg went to a birthday party and got a cupcake while Kate got to spend the night with her beloved Nonny and have homemade ice cream and hot fudge.  UGH.  No, I suppose it's not fair.  But when they say things aren't fair, they have no idea how right they are.  Life isn't fair.  My heart wants to shield them from that forever and yet we all know this is not possible.  You cannot be on this earth and not experience some of what makes life unfair. 

And yet, they are growing up and these are lessons that they will learn.  Gently, I hope. It will build their character to learn these things.  But with that knowledge will come the loss of something that they will not ever get back.  What they'll lose - that innocence; that "spark" - they have it now.  I need to enjoy it today and nurture it so that it doesn't go away completely as they age.  I look at them now - their little personalities - and I am so proud of how happy they are.  Meg is about to explode because of her birthday.  She cannot WAIT she is so excited!  I can't believe I was able to get her to sleep tonight.  And Kate is dancing and doing her gymnastics all over the place.  They are always smiling.  Always laughing.  That will help them through the tougher times in life.

And on this night five years ago, I remember that I went into the den and cried my eyes out for an hour wondering what on earth I was going to do with two children.  I was already suffering from PPD at that time, I just didn't know it yet.  All I knew was that I was scared to death and could not imagine how I would handle it all.  I felt like I had made a huge mistake by disrupting my life and having children.  And I knew it was a mistake I could not correct.  It was done.  I had one child and was on the eve of having another one.  And that night and for far too many nights afterward, I didn't want any of it.  Which I should have recognized as being strange feelings at the time since I had so enjoyed Kate in the 20 months I had had her.  But that was temporarily erased by my hormones and chemistry during the months that followed Meg's birth.

But this post is not about depression. And neither is my journal. It is about life and living. You can read it in the pages of my strange journey. It starts out sounding like hopelessness. It's bleak. But as the story goes on there are little victories. The first outing with two children to the grocery store, for example. Until finally, the entries at most make a passing reference to it.  It became about what I was thinking and feeling as my girls grew. One day I hope they will treasure it.  I hope they won't need to read it because they are going through what I went through after childbirth.  But perhaps if they do, they will see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for them.  Just as there has been for me.  The conclusion:

But here I sit.  Five years later.  With a very happy home, two very secure, very happy girls and a beautiful great, great life.  We are so blessed.  Kate and Meg are so loved.  Our lives are nothing fancy, but we have happiness.  We have fun.  There is nothing I need other than the three other people in this house.  The person who started this journal bears only a faint resemblance to the person who writes in it now.  But I am glad for the experience that person had.  Because she has helped this person truly appreciate her children and the joys of their childhood.