What we do for a good picture...

Last week, I brought Christian in to have his very first set of school pictures taken.

We were all set:
We had practiced the smile.
We had described what would happen.
And Christian looked rather dapper.

When we got to school, he was all ready to go. All smiles, and properly responding to any prompts of "Smile," or "Cheeeese."

But then. He saw it.

The scary black box that he was supposed to sit on.

and it was all over.

Trust me. It was an all-out fit. 

NO amount of coercion was helping. Not lollipops. Not M & M's. Not Hershey bars. {I know. I know. pitiful.} That kid refused to sit on the black box.

And whenever I tried to just put him there, we had back-arching and high-pitched girly screaming, people.

So, finally, in a full sweat, I had an idea.

and...

it worked:

hilarious, right????

for five full minutes, I sat like this.
for five full minutes we tried to coerce this cute curmudgeon to smile.
{and thank the good Lord that I wore black yoga pants that day!}

and to add insult to injury,
No one will ever know that I bent over backward {ahem. literally} for this delightful picture: