15-Month Portraits

First thing this morning, Annalise and I headed off to Kiddie Kandids to try and get her pictures taken. It's much more expensive than J.C. Penney's but I've liked the results a lot more too. Kiddie Kandids is located inside Babies-R-Us and with no gate to keep Annalise in the photo studio, she was immediately trying to run all over the store to persue her intended career of Ultimate Destroyer. I got her up on the photo platform and right away she was having none of it. Usually we get at least 30 seconds of goodwill which equates to approximately two semi-decent photos after which point the entire operation is shut down due to Scream-Factor. But today she started right off with tears, clinging to me and no desire to look at the camera with anything other than a very displeased grimace. We wanted her to sit on a little bench which she flatly refused. Once we offered her an ugly fake flower though, she accepted it with a semi-pleasant expression on her face. Hence, this photo:

I wasn't thinking at all about doing holiday shots, but they had so many cute props that I thought it might be fun to have her sit in a sleigh. Alas, Annalise disagreed. Vehemently. There were tears. There was moaning. And clutching of mommy's neck with desperation. Finally, I looked around the studio in desperation myself. I spotted a snowman, almost as tall as the Clingy One and had an idea.

"Annalise!" I said very excitedly, snatching up the snowman, plopping him next to her, and appealing to her exceptionally peer-affectionate tendencies. "Look at the snowman! Isn't he cute? Don't you want to HUG him?! And KISS him?!" Well, did she ever. Annalise screeched with delight, toddled forward, and mauled the snowman with love. Hence, these pictures:

And at that point she was in such a good mood that she continued smiling when we took him away,

and even sat right down in the sleigh without being prompted!

Ten points for the snowman.