Product Placement

We must have spent about seventeen hours trying to come up with a decent picture for our family Christmas card this year, when you add up all the different venues and poses and outfits we tried. And when I say 'we' above, I mean, as I usually do, "Wendy". I believe I've made this clear before, but most of the time when I'm talking about some sort of task we have undertaken to better organize our lives, or be more active socially, or reach out to our family, I mean Wendy when I say 'we'. "We" is, after all, a reasonable abbreviation of her name.

For minute, after grueling minute, Wendy tried to capture just the right image. Digital cameras are wonderful. You can click away to your heart's content, never worrying about wasting film. Unfortunately you also have to be able to predict two seconds into the future because of the lag time between button being pushed and picture being taken. We never take pictures of Kiernan when he is smiling. We take pictures of him when he's going to smile. As with most of the things we're teaching him to do, I'm not sure who is being trained here, us or him. Wendy got a bunch of pretty good shots, but nothing she was ecstatic about.

So, the day before Christmas, we got Kiernan in his Santa suit--a gift from Wendy's Uncle Tom and Aunt Bonnie--and chased him around the tree for half an hour. This activity yielded several great shots, like the one above. The only problem was that stupid soda bottle. It seemed like every good shot had some dopey product placement in it like that.

Eventually Wendy just picked a variety of shots that went to different people. You probably know this, as you probably got one. I love the one above. I also loved this one of him riding the traditional Rocking Moose that he got for his birthday from Amy and Lisa. The only problem with that picture being the offstage arm of his mother. It's a cute arm, and structurally necessary, but it kind of throws off the composition of the picture.

Kiernan now has a Rocking Moose (pictured), a Rocking Horse that his Nana and Pop sent him, and a Rocking Fish that his Gammy and Grance gave him. Eventually we hope to have a rocking representative of each member of the animal kingdom. Kind of the Noah's Ark of rocking animal collections, if you will, but with only one of each.

Lord knows I don't need these things breeding. We have enough toys that make noise as it is.