new baby pictures

My daughter disavows ever dressing her newborn son just for picture taking … but once she puts him in a pair overalls for newborns, pulls on a holiday outfit or tucks him into one of his blankets, “He is so cute I have to take his picture. He is adorable,” she says.
Especially now that he is starting to smile.
Typical of a first-time mother she snaps a lot of shots. With the freedom afforded with digital cameras to take plenty of poses and print only the best shots, plus a couple of snap-happy friends, she keeps me well-stocked with baby pictures.
I waited forever for them to bring the new baby home from the hospital – they posed for pictures riding in the wheelchair down the hallway, getting into the car, in the car and at their front door with their bundle of joy.
Before he was 4-days-old the child had an album of photos. Then their friend arrived with his fancy camera. I watched as the new mother held up her baby boy beside a big pumpkin for an “Our lil punkin’ shot.” The wee one had fallen asleep. She nudged him a little to open his eyes while the friend snapped the funniest shot of one little man scowling in protest as he reached out to ward off his mother’s hand.
The last of October, say what she will, I know she spent the day arranging pillows which she covered with a gold colored blanket, propped him in the middle and spread silk fall leaves around him for his first formal shot. He wore a sweat suit with a logo that declared, “Baby’s first Boo.” Too young to smile, but quite awake, he gently raised his little feet to show off the soft, brushed leather boots a friend had given them.
He will hate her for it later, but another day she laid him out in his birthday suit on his soft blue blanket and took a few too many pictures.
One of her friends found a baby hat with a stuffed moosehead figure on the top and its matching socks. My daughter added a long-legged onesie with moose figures and called me up, laughing, “He is too little to know what he looks like in that outfit.”
He didn’t know, but he responded to her laughter with his first tentative smiles producing yet another photo – that as a teenager – he will shuffle around, “Aww gee, Mom, do you hafta pull out my baby pictures every time I bring a girl home?”
Their elderly neighbors insured a posed Christmas picture with their gift for the newborn: a Santa suit and hat. I was visiting the day he fell asleep in his Santa suit on a gray blanket. She put a plate of milk and cookies beside him, tucked his fingers around the edge of a green sack with toys spilling out and had the other hand grasping a half-eaten cookie – creating a “worn-out Santa” picture.
Later, her husband had their photographer friend take a posed shot of my daughter kissing the Santa suit-clad baby. They labeled it “I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus” and sent it, along with many others, out to friends and family as their Christmas greeting this year.
Nothing like a new baby to fill up everyone’s shelves with photos.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)