Why I outsource the picturetaking of my children

Ever since Jacob was a baby, I have taken my kids to real photographers on a pretty regular basis. During the first year I like to get them around 3, 6, 9 and 12 months (and I will always deeply regret not getting true newborn pictures done of any of my kids when they were a week or two old). After that I like to take them about twice a year -- spring and fall. As a result of our regular visits to incredibly talented photographers, we have an abundance of awesome pictures of our kids around the house, and I love them all. Now, David will tell you that we are dangerously close to having too many pictures of the kids and crossing that unspoken picture freak line. And you know what? He is probably right. But these baby/preschooler/young elementary days are so fleeting, and it is important to me that we capture these sweet moments on film while our children are little. And while we DO try to take snapshots as we go, a photographer I am not. This one is very typical of the kind of picture I get of all three kids:
That is actually one of my better works, because it is not blurry and there is no red eye. I tried again today and got a pretty good one, but Caroline's leg was caught in the back slat of the rocking chair, so I had to abandon the session and rescue her:
And that, in a nutshell, is why we just can't be relied on to get the kind of pictures that I want to get of the kids. We are too busy untangling limbs from furniture, removing legos from mouths, breaking up scuffles, kissing boo boos, making meals, cleaning up meals, cleaning up kids and generally trying to keep the little people from taking over. And then there is that whole lack of photographic talent thing. So we'll keep trying with the snapshots, but in the meantime, I will continue to get everyone scrubbed up and drag them out to the Botanical Gardens a couple of times a year so that we will be sure to have some really great pictures of them -- in focus no less!!