There Will Be No Shoes for My Children

We've got a serious "the cobbler's children have no shoes" sort of situation going on over here, which is my only way of explaining why I'm lacking pretty portraits of the girls. Sure, I have piles and piles of candid photos that I love, but actually having them dress up and pose nicely? 

Pshaw.

They get the annual daisy and rose photos. That's me almost achieving.

But, somebody mentioned that I didn't have a recent photo of Mila on my desk so blah, blah, blah, I made up my mind to do actual "Three Year" portraits with her. I planned to dress her up, grab some props, and even go to a nice place for them. But then reality struck and the weather sucked a bunch of days and we were busy all of the rest of the days. Days turned into weeks turned into months and finally I just said "Screw it." We happened to be in Oakland running around the library right around the time it happened to not be raining. Which, that's a rare thing lately. When it is't raining, it's too humid for life, it seems. I dove through that rare opening when I was in the right place and the weather wasn't terrible.

Totally impromptu, we headed into the outdoor garden at Phipps. Alexis snuck off to a corner to read because that's basically her dream come true - time in a "secret garden" hiding behind the pages of a book. Mila had a cute dress on and didn't look like she had been rolling in chocolate recently, so it was as good as things were going to get.

Screw props.

It took about 2.6023 seconds for me to remember the REAL reason I have so few portraits of the girls. I have all the patience in the world for other people's kids when it's photo session time (Truly! I've got all day and then some to get good portraits of other kids!). I have ZERO patience for my own kids. It's almost like they use up their fair share of my patience with every breath they take.

Mila was all "NOOOOOPE."

She had things to jump on and places to hide and the running. All of the running.

I managed to capture a few good portraits of her, but mostly I have outtakes. Lots and lots of outtakes.

So I'm just going to go back to taking portraits of other people's kids. That seems to work out better for me.