Portraits of Monkeys

I feel like part of being a parent involves doing things you don't necessarily WANT or NEED to do, but feel obligated to do anyways because....um.... that's just what you're supposed to do.
 Specifically - portrait studio pictures.
You know those ones inside department stores that always bait you in with coupons for free sittings and free 8x10s - then take tons of cute pictures and sucker you into buying some expensive package of wayyyy more printed photos than you'll ever need.
 Then you have these formal, posed pictures of your children that hardly even look like them, because they have to be bribed and begged to pose nicely for 2 minutes.

 But Grandma wants those pictures on her wall.
 So we do it anyway.

 But it will be a long time before we go back, because this was pretty chaotic. Or at least I won't do it ALONE again.

With Brian working during all daylight hours, I had to just suck it up one Monday morning, dress them in their outfits from Nonny, and take them to the department store portrait studio.
With my token coupon in hand. Which the "photographer" asked for up front - just assuming I had a coupon, not even knowing if I did or not.
Then of course someone filled his diaper. Then another someone wouldn't keep her shoes on. Then another kept pulling her hair ties out.
Then their mom had to jump around like a monkey to get them to look at the camera.
And might have also bribed them with Smarties to smile nicely. Which ended up just messing up some pictures because you can see the Smarties in their mouths.

Then the ordeal of listening to the  photographer go through all the package options, when I told him I just wanted the very smallest package, with my 50% off coupon  (because I knew I could just do screen shots off the online viewing album, and I didn't need more prints than just enough to send to the grandparents).
Except these screen shots are a little blurry, of course. Blah.
But you get the idea.
They came. They posed. They got Smarties.

And their mom fulfilled some unwritten obligation to get these types of photos done during her children's monkey stage.