Photos for a family with a dog in it*

At approximately 11:30 am today you could have found me sitting on a bench at a local mall, sweaty, shaking and crying (just a tiny bit).

You see today I had to take the girls to get their Australian passport photos done (and my Australian citizenship & Canadian passport photos) and if you read my post on Thursday you might understand why it wasn’t something I was looking forward to. I even found my self near tears in the car just anticipating the upcoming event – which I quickly realized was totally stupid, gave myself a slap (not literally) and kept on going. Anyway, what I’m saying is I was dreading what I knew we were in for (but still foolishly hoped we weren’t).

The story…

We set out for the post office around quarter to eleven this morning. On the drive I didn’t tell K what we were doing, but when we went inside she heard me tell the guy why we were there. We did not get the photos done at the first stop, mind you, because that post office was not set up for passport photos and he directed me to the central post office (which was where another post office suggested I go a couple weeks earlier because they could not do children’s passports and assured me this one could, but I got them mixed up). While driving to the new location K started saying, “No photo.” – over and over. That’s when I started bribing my two and a half year old. I started by promising an ice cream at McDonalds and she was all for the treat, but insisted on no photo. I added a new toy to the bribe, but she was still not budging. By this time we arrived at the central post office, paid for an hour’s worth of parking and got in a long line inside. Our turn came up and I told the lady why we were there, she looked at K and told me they were not set up for children that young**, I gave her a look that would likely make a giant bear drop dead on the spot and she directed us to a camera shop nearby. I did not go to this camera shop because they were rude to me not that long ago and I don’t want to give them the business so I went to a different one near where I live. On the way E and I managed to get K to agree to having her photo taken. She was excited about the prospect of all the treats to come and I gave her a big hug and a little cheer telling her how happy I was she was willing to cooperate. E was first and had her photo taken without a hitch, then it was K’s turn and she apparently changed her mind because she had a complete meltdown. Again. I tried holding her up, bribing again, threatening to throw Puppy in the bin, but it was impossible. If I was able to get her standing she would cover her eyes, if I tried to hold her arms she went limp, if I tried holding her arms and forcing her to stand she would shut her eyes tight and scream like a banshee. There is no way to force a two and a half year old to take a photo. Trust me – I KNOW. It was at this point that I left the shop for a minute for us to all calm down. This was also the point where we ended up on that bench looking like the most pathetic bunch of people you have ever seen. We need K to have these photos, there is no way around that. It is especially frustrating that a child who is a ham for the camera and will ask to have her picture taken if she spots the camera is so dead set stubborn about getting these done. The guy at the camera shop may have come up with a solution and we’ll find out if it works this afternoon – and God help K that it works or she might be in the same boat as Abby come April***.

The not so important cherry on top of all this is that I made the genius decision to go last and that means that my photo was taken after I was sweaty, shaking and crying. I look real purty.

*I let E name the post because I am about ready to quit this day (it’s 4:00pm). And we do not have a dog.

**The post office is where you have to go for the passport interview, so you’d think at least one around here would be able to take a small child’s photo. Not that it would have mattered for us anyway.

***Kidding. Sort of.

Updated at 5:16pm: It worked! It worked! I just wish her citizenship photo looked this normal: