Painful Portrait

As anyone who has ever taken small children to have portraits done, it is a true pain. With one child it is a challenge, but not insurmountable. I have come to understand that as you increase the number of kids in the picture, the challenge grows expontentially. When John was younger, getting his portrait done was not too bad (after the first miserable attempt when he was 6 months old). Now, add Kara to the mix and I've got a problem. Today we went to get Kara's 18 month pictures done, nevermind that she's now 21 months. She was unsure of the whole thing. The camera, the lights, the stranger, it was almost too much. John had a hard time waiting for his turn to get into the picture. When we finally had enough of her alone, I wanted a couple of shots with both kids. We did get one really good picture of them together, and then it was downhill from there. After two more okay pictures, Kara decided she was absolutely done and climbed off the table, into my arms and would NOT let go. She kept shaking her head and saying "NO." After a minute I realized that any further efforts would be futile and that we should just take what we had and go on rather than push her and end up with a tantrum. The portraits will be really darling, but they never seem to reflect the true experience of getting them taken. At least now I think I can be done with this for awhile...well, she will be 2 before long....