courtesy of forbes.alpineschools.org

Picture Day….It’s coming next week.

It’s a big day, I think more for us parents than for our kids.

We can plan so much of this day, the outfit, the background, the hair….. but no matter how much we practice with them, we just never know how that picture day face is going to turn out.

I remember when the older kids came home after pictures…”Show me the face you did today! Did you smile?! Teeth or no teeth??”, and they would indulge with their best reenactment of the picture day face.

It doesn’t always turn out well.

You just never know. Possible future presidential candidate…. and they dig this one up:

Ouch….

So, not knowing what the future holds… we do our best to practice our best picture face. Now, this will be Sammy’s first “real” school picture day. The first in a long line of picture days to mark his growth, his awkward phases, his acne phases, perhaps his bad outfit choices. My problem is, when I tell him to smile, it usually ends up looking like this:

……. I’ve got a million of these faces from a million moments I’ve tried to capture as he looks so natural…until he’s told to smile.

But I’ve noticed something. Maybe you’ve noticed this too with your own kids. Sammy is always most photogenic when he’s not smiling, when he’s serious, pissed off, even crying.

I like to call this ” Young Abercrombie” Taken as he is so mad at me for forcing him to look directly into the setting sun…. but SO worth it.

So we got a form from the photographer, asking for us to fill in the usual, background color choice, blah blah blah. With it came a little questionnaire asking what they can do to help my child attain a very “pleasant expression”, and do I prefer a serious face, or a smiling face?

Serious, definitely serious. And if you can get him teary eyed, but not actually crying, that would be great.