The Wearying Life of a Baby Model

 I was looking through some older photos last night of my little guy modeling my hats for my etsy shop, and couldn't stop laughing . . . maybe it was partially due to the sugar rush from my last-minute-9:30-at-night cookie-baking spree (when will I learn that those are always a bad idea?), but definitely in part because if you check out my shop, you'll see cute little pictures like these:

 

 (yeah, that's my son in a girl's hat . . . what? He doesn't know the difference. And let's be honest here, up until a certain age, babies are pretty gender-neutral. Would you have guessed he's a boy in that flower hat?)

But what you don't see are the hundreds of duds that we take before getting that one good shot:

So, as a bit of a public service announcement on behalf of my little model Forrest, we'd like you to know just how dang difficult his life as a baby model can be.

Focusing on batting those big blue eyes and giving a sweet gummy smile can be difficult when you'd rather taste the props:

 

And the product itself must be carefully inspected . . . quality control, people!

 

Of course, there's always the issue of distractions--who wants to smile at mom when there's a bug to examine right over there?

Or a mirror on the wall with a handsome fellow inside?

A model can't choose the times of his photo shoots, and sometimes they just don't jive with your mood. Some days you might feel like shouting instead of smiling:

Or you might be overcome with an uncontrollable case of the giggles mid-shoot:

And let's get real. No matter how delicious your little face looks most of the time, some days just aren't your finest, appearance-wise:

Even when you are looking particularly scrumptious, temptations abound. Like those tasty fingers dangling conveniently right on the end of your arm . . . go ahead, give them a suck or two:

And by golly, you do your best, but sometimes the product just won't cooperate with you:

Did we mention how exhausting this job can be?

So now that you know that there's an awful lot of this . . .

. . . behind every one of these:

. . . I'm sure you'll appreciate it so much more.