School Pictures!!! - the "boring" "official" ones we paid for

I love their beautiful, toothy, fake smiles and "am I doing it right?" eyes.

I love the bright colors of Fe's ... Everything. and How much care she put into doing her hair. She really likes to have all eyes on her and what better opportunity than class picture day?
I love the clarity of her heritage shown in her face. The the beauty of her hair, which we just "cut" for the first time in almost two years. By cut, we mean, trimmed off the dead ends to be healthy and attractive to build her (unstable, easily shattered) self-esteem. The nose that reflects her family makes me smile. I'm grateful that we can sit with her BirthGrandpa, going through old family photos, listening to stories about her BM and other family and being able to see "who she gets" the various features from. It tends to be as infuriating as it is wonderful that we can have this link for Fe.
She really wants to make the photographer happy and desperately hopes that everyone finds her perfect and lovely and worthy of love. She warms and breaks my heart all at the same time.

I love Sunshine's tired-but-holding-on-with-all-she's-got tense smile. I can see that she's liking the attention but is overwhelmed by it. She's feeling so many things all at once and can't pick which way to go, a true dear in the headlights feeling. Her teeth are growing in too close together and the dentists are planning on fitting her braces in the not-too-distant-future. She lost another one days before this. It's in the front.
We spent time this morning spiking her short, fresh pixy-cut that does nothing to hide her ears. She fixed it so that it's flat like "Justin Beebver". She feels more comfortable with something in her hands to mess with when there's a camera. There's nothing in her hands. That's awkward for Sunshine. She's never had an "official school picture" taken before; MommyT usually does pictures out in the fresh, cool air. She doesn't know how this will go and can't let her dimples explode in their full glory. Oh, and I don't know if she's slept this week month year.


I really wish I had PhotoShop back. I had an older version that doesn't work on my (less than a decade old) computer, I had fun playing with pictures on it, planting my own backgrounds around photos and people until I was happy with the results. I think I could have fun with these, placing our girls in more fitting backgrounds. I am a firm advocate of the new option they've given this year, letting parents buy the rights to their kids' photos instead of individual or package prints. We did't get any prints but for $20 they've sold me the rights and a digital copy of the photo that will print out nicely to a pretty good size which I can crop, edit, print, and "play with" to my hearts content.