Also known as: Why you need a professional photographer.

(Follow the link. Heather is my BFF and an amazing photographer. So if you live near Franklin, TN -- you're in!)

Part of the reason I just can't seem to plunge into the scrapbooking craze is that my pictures are generally pretty crappy. So why embellish crap?

Anyway, a photo I recently took of my kids pretty much sums up the problem. (Email me if you want it -- I'll be happy to send it your way if I know you!) I have two boys and a girl. Don't get me started about what a hoopla that causes in casual conversation -- "Aren't you so relieved you finally have a GIRL?!?!?" and other completely ridiculous comments. (Which usually subside when they meet said girl, who is pretty much out there on the tomboy scale and counts a stiff-arm "get away from me" as an early achievement.)

Suffice to say, girl or not, people want to see how the baby of the family is growing. My daughter is just under two years old. Last Christmas she was an itty bitty thing. So people want to see what she looks like now. Let's face it, this is one of the only times in life (boy or girl) that people are gracious and generous. Babies, toddlers and even preschoolers, as long as they don't have too much contact with anyone, are pretty much the center of the "oooh and aahh" world.

This photo would simply not "do," in polite terms, for those people looking for this type of affirmation. Yet my daughter insisted (maybe on purpose) to rebel against this pose, while her brothers were cooperating. She refused to take her brother's skeleton mask off.

Bully for her.