I didn’t have high expectation for the photos to turn out well. After all, the entire photoshoot was an alternate between Lauren bursting into tears and us trying to make the kids laugh.

I will preface this with the day before the shoot. I was sick. A waterfall flowed down my nose pretty much for the entire day until I overdosed on Zyrtec liquid. How? In my woozy state of mind, I remembered the dose for kids is 5 drops twice a day. For adults, 20 drops and I assumed it is twice a day too. It is not. I read the instruction as the second dose went down my throat. Too late.

The shooting day. I got a quick hair trim, shoved a kebab down my throat for lunch, put kids to nap, went to Hadara Chill Mom to meet my readers, rushed home, made sure we packed everything and took a cab to Botanical Gardens for the photo shoot at 5 pm. I was exhausted by the time I got there.

We forgot to pack Georgia’s milk. Perfect. Took the baby into the stuffy public toilet to breastfeed. Lauren thought I was doing something fun with Georgia and joined us in our tiny cubicle. 10 minutes later, with melted makeup, sweaty kids, we were ready for our first ever family photo shoot.

I think we look pretty good eh? The photographs turned out way better than I thought.

Luckily for us, our photographer Irene is a pro at photoshoot involving young children. She isn’t frazzled by Lauren’s moodiness or her constant running away from the ‘set’. According to her, it is all part of the job.

She brought mini animal clips to keep Lauren and Georgia occupied and looking happy momentarily to be captured on photo. If you haven’t noticed, she brought lollipop for Lauren too, which appears in almost all the photos because Lauren refused to let it go. Until today, Lauren still speaks of jie-jie (sister) lollipop fondly.
I received all 96 photos just 3 days later. Impressive turn around time. Cloud Productions informed me that the usual waiting time is 2 weeks, but customers usually get their high resolutions soft copies earlier than 2 weeks as soon as it is ready.

We didn’t really prepare for the photoshoot, but if you are keen, here’s a post on outdoor photography tips which are very helpful.

If you haven’t had a family photo shoot before, I highly recommend it. Yes, it was a bit of a disaster for us, but guess what? It has become part of the story that goes with the photos. And the value of those photographs? Priceless. The kids are growing so quickly and there won’t be another time.