Lights, Camera, Toupee Action!

July 21st, 2011

Not sure if you know this about Ryan's mother, Ang....she is a freaky, picture-taking-happy person. "Oh his first toe nail clipping 'click!'... oh, he is wearing the same outfit as last Thursday  'click!'....oh he is a day older 'click!'" I am not exaggerating. She is a nut case! If there was a support group for wasted mega-pixels, she would need a sponsor or three. What is more, she is not good at taking pictures. Too blurry, "what is white balance?" or she turns the camera sideways in order to get the entire world in the shot. Of course she is not the one editing these shots or the one that has to rotate that pics clockwise for one picture or counter-clockwise times two for the next shot. She reminds me of Austin Powers, "yeah baby, work it...give me a smile..all in here, okay you're a lemur...give me a growl..okay now look this way, NO! not here, look over there...aaaand I'm spent, GOOD SHOOT EVERYBODY!" In reality the only thing that she achieves is a confused baby who is one step closer to realizing his mommy is craaAAAZzzyy and a husband that dreads the camera download. 
Now blaming Ang for consuming all the memory in our external hard drive is not fair. I do have my fair share of blame, but mine are well thought out and it's understood that I am capturing the moment, not the entire space/time continuum.  I would also not be fair unless I threw his other family members under the bus.  I would like to thank Krista and Mandy.....my sister and her girlfriend...Ashley and Tami...want me to keep going? These ladies in Ryan's life are just fuel to this fire and I see no end any time soon. We entered Ryan in the baby contest at the County Fair (along with Brody) and I bet we had pictures from 6 different vantage points. They had more people taking pictures of them than George Clooney at the Oscars. The aforementioned snap-happy sirens are at every event, cook-out, bath time, baby sitting and breath of these kid's life- luring these poor dudes in with their rattles and squeaky toys just to get them to look at them for a picture. They think everything Ryan and Brody do is just the cutest. Well they may be right, but something has to be said about the repercussions of their actions. Think about the damage to their eyes from the flashes or the affect it could have on their egos. Ryan's head is already ninety-seven percentile so giving him a bigger head isn't necessary. 
I know what you are thinking- Chris, you are posting him all over the Internet and have a freaking blog all about him. All of your Facebook friends could pick him out of a line-up and he has fans in England and Japan. Further Chris, you have entered him in a baby contest and now his face is plastered in the paper. Well all that may be true and you all make a good point, but I have to say it is all about quality, not quantity.  I truly love my new muse. He is so fun to work with, write about, draw and photograph. He gives my creativity an outlet and I get to share him with everyone else via those mediums. We have family in Wisconsin, Alabama, Texas, Florida and friends all over this great country, so this blog and Facebook are a good way to let them see how he is growing up and what he is doing. That is my argument and it trumps the 800 pictures of his first sock that Ang has consuming our memory....not to mention she will never look at that picture again. 
The county fair was a great experience for Ryan and us because he was able to do it with his Cousin Brody. All of his Aunts, cousins and honorary Aunts filled the cattle barn with flashes and "awww's". Yes, Brody was freaking hilarious in his Lumberjack beard with a rick of wood and Ryan woo'ed the judges as a Baby Toupee salesman and yes the picture in the paper will be a memory to pull out of the picture box years from now and yes I understand we will have to send them to therapy because of it all. Something inside me says, who cares, he is only a baby once and we want to capture everything. There is also a part of me that says too much of anything is not good. Whatever the answer is I know that Ryan is a lucky dude for these people. Capturing these times is very important to all of us. Capturing history...and diaper changes is a great part of who we are as family. Everyone loves to look back at old pictures, especially when you can see if your kid has a resemblance to your old pictures. As for Ryan, I think in the future, when he is sitting around with his wife and wonders what his first fingernail clipping looked like he will be so thankful that his mother will have it in external hard drive 14, Gallery 312, Subsection B, Pictures 801-962. (click!)