The Thing with the Things

Today I was hired to take some pictures of the Things on a carousel at the big fancy mall. It was a pretty sweet job since I take pictures of the Things all the time anyway. The thing is….The Things know me. While this definitely cuts down on the shyness factor it does raise some other issues.

We have our own inside jokes and worst of all we always make faces at each other. In fact, I can proudly say that I taught them both the pig-nose-squish-lips face as well as the upside-down-inside-out-fingers-making-owl-eyes “Captain Honolulu” face. Something every kid should know. (If you need instructions, email me, I’ll be glad to help.) Just like my niece, they’ve also got my tongue-out-sideways-big-bulging-eyeballs face down too. (Yeah, I’m the evil Auntie who teaches babies how to blow raspberries.) I’ve ruined them.

Or at least I’ve ruined them for photo shoots. Even the old reverse psychology “Don’t smile, no…no… no, don’t smile!” doesn’t work with them anymore. Thing One has perfected the most solemn morbid look you have ever seen. You’d think I just ran over her cat or something. She can hold a frown for five minutes straight, even after being tickled! She’s going to be an actress.

The photo shoot went fine after I instructed her to look like Cinderella and pretend the horse she was on was the sweetest horse ever. She batted her eyelashes, she looked seductively over one shoulder and worked it like a Victoria’s Secret model. For Thing Two all I had to tell him was to pretend he was a cowboy and he was racing his horse over the plains. That worked a little too well and he nearly fell off his horse as he whipped back and forth exuberantly.

Not bad for a day’s work.