Merry Christmas (plus Christmas card photo fails)

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas (or very merry religious celebration, or, if all else fails, a very nice Tuesday)! For your viewing pleasure, our Christmas card this year:

I love sending out Christmas cards. Come on, it’s a chance to show off your cute kid without anyone rolling their eyes at you for embracing every possible opportunity (and inventing some opportunities of your own) to show off your cute kid. Plus, the sad truth is, if I don’t send out Christmas cards, I don’t receive any. I am very popular indeed.

I used a few of our family photos taken in April on the card (which is just an inexpensive stock template from Walmart, by the way—I’m so fancy!), but I really wanted a big cute Christmas-y looking one of just Forrest, so a new photo it was. But surely you know by now that a cute picture is never a given in this family, and is only won after a hard-wrought battle with many tears and casualties involved?

For your viewing displeasure, the battle to get a decent picture of Forrest looking Christmas-y:

I set up a chair in front of the tree and set Forrest on it, dressed in an adorable holiday bow tie I made for him. Jeff stood behind me, dancing around like a maniac to try and get him to smile. Forrest was mildly amused, but mostly looked awkward and uncomfortable. I can’t blame him, I feel awkward and uncomfortable watching Jeff dance, too.

And it didn’t take long for him to get bored and sullen with us for making him sit there instead of letting him play, despite our not-so-hilarious antics (enjoy the non-matching socks—it’s all about the details, people).

Perhaps the basket of ornaments from my Christmas display will make a cute prop and keep him busy/entertained!

That’s a negative.

Okay, maybe if we give him the precious comfort blankie, we’ll get a few smiles.

Sigh. Nice smile, sure, but you can hardly even see him behind the blankie and fingers, and you can’t see the bow tie at all (which is, of course, the star of the show).

We took the blankie away and entered an unfortunate nose-picking photo series. This boy thinks the funniest thing he could possibly ever do is pick his nose. And if you pull his finger out of his nostril, he thinks he’s only being stopped because his finger doesn’t belong in his nose, so he’ll just grab your finger and try to dig around with it instead. Christmas card gold, right here:

We finally admitted defeat. We are not entertaining, we are not funny, and our son is clearly  not male model material.

Until Jeff brought out his inner genius and employed a simple trick to get these adorable shots:

What did he do, you ask? He gracefully acknowledged the fact that our child will never willingly give us a cute smile, and instead pulled up Curious George on the laptop and held it up behind my head while I took pictures.

You win this round, George. And every round.

I picked a favorite and sent it to Chelsea at Two Twenty One  to work her Photoshop magic, and she certainly delivered. I think it came out beyond adorable:

A perfect Christmas card shot. And now you are the secret-keepers of this precious, frightening knowledge: he’s only cute and happy when he’s watching Curious George.