Okay, so it has been a while since a post. I’m not really sure why – seems like something always gets in the way of sitting down at ye olde computer and typing away. I even toyed with the idea of shutting down the Playpen once he turned one. I was talked out of it by Dara.
Quincy turned one on August 15, but we had his one year pictures taken on August 9th. The reason? In case it was a a total disaster, we wanted the flexibility to go back and try again around his actual birthday. We had heard from a number of people at how bad their experiences had been, so we were prepared for things to not go well. It started out ominously…..
We had all gotten up as usual on Wednesday – around 6 something. We were sitting down to breakfast in the kitchen when I saw Amanda (lives next door, friend of ours and who we rent the apartment from, along with Alva) coming up to our door. She didn’t look happy. I figured something bad had happened. I told Dara she was coming up to the door, and she went and opened it. Dara looked at her, saw her serious expression, and said “What’s wrong?” To paraphrase – our hot water heater died. Hmm – that’s not good.
We were lucky for a couple reasons: #1 – Dara had bathed Quincy the night before – he was ready, #2 – Since Alva and Amanda are friends of ours and they live next door, she told us to use their bathroom to shower and #3 – We would be gone all day, giving Alva time to install the new hot water heater. We felt lucky to have narrowly averted that potential roadblock. We were, however, a little nervous about what kind of day we were going to have from that point onwards.
Luckily, nothing else bad happened that day. There were minor inconveniences, like slow traffic and construction, but we managed to get up to Rochester in plenty of time to have lunch first, get cleaned up and then head over to J.C. Penny for the picture. We not only had pictures taken of Quincy, but had some family shots taken as well. Dara had wanted us to all wear matching outfits. To that end, we ordered, from L.L. Bean, long-sleeved, white polo shirts. We wore those along with denim pants. We changed at the restaurant after we ate. We really looked like we belonged in some kind of cult or something wearing those outfits. Funny, but most people didn’t even notice or pay any attention to it.
We got to our photo appointment early and they were able to take us early. The same photographer Quincy had for his 6 month pictures did these as well. We did the family photos first and then singles of just Quincy. Quincy did very well. Since he is highly mobile, keeping him sitting or standing in one place is a challenge. When he did cry, the photographer would bring in his stuffed animal dog and bark at Quincy, who would then smile as the photographer jumped back and snapped the picture. He got a lot of good shots.
Dara picked out the ones she wanted, having made her list beforehand so as not to be overwhelmed by all the options (remember what happened at 3 months?). We then spent the rest of the afternoon visiting with Ryan & Debbie and his cousins before we had to head home. Basically, it went better and more smoothly than we could have drawn up ourselves. We return to Rochester on August 30 to pick them up.