Best Face Forward

We just returned from a one-night vacation to Ocean City, New Jersey. It was a whirlwind 24 hours of sandcastle building, endless kiddie boardwalk rides, and subpar food, the stuff of which summer vacations are made.



While there, I decided to take some close-up shots of the three of us to send to our baby in a photo album. It's an odd and somewhat surreal thing to pose for a picture for someone with whom you're trying develop a close-knit relationship via FedEx. The closest equivalent might be submitting a photo for a dating website. Therein, you want to put your best face forward for your ideal date, to look attractive and confident - and if you're the average American, slimmer.

But how do we pose for a picture for a child halfway around the world? What exactly do we want to convey to the baby? Warmth, security, happiness, gentleness, I would guess. That's a tall order when squinting into the morning sun on a beach.

Here are the photos I've settled upon:

"Come on, Craig, smile at your baby!"



The picture above was salvaged out of 7 takes.

Considering we had our eyes open in these pictures and our six chins mostly tucked away, the pictures are good by our family's standards. We usually have to take at least 5 bad pictures to get one good shot of ourselves. (If there is an advantage to our child not sharing our genetic makeup, not inheriting our unphotogenic tendencies is a big one!) And no, there isn't yet a picture of Andrew; true to form, he was in constant motion and hard to photograph. At the end of the day, I figure if our baby doesn't break out into tears at the sight of our pictures, we've done well enough.

In specific adoption-related news, we are still waiting for our referral. September 9th will be our 5-month waiting anniversary. It's hard not to wonder whenever the phone rings or whenever the answering machine light flashes whether it is "The Call." Since our agency's last update nearly 2 months ago estimated our wait to be 2-4 more months, it could be any day now... Wow.