…that there was actually a time when he was little enough to stretch out in a chair and take a Sunday afternoon nap.

While wearing Scooby Doo slippers.

Sweet thing.

Today I was trying to get a good Christmas card shot of Alex, an undertaking I liken to wrestling with a greased pig. The child is incapable of being still for more than about .4 seconds, which is a bit faster than I can press the button thing-y. As a result, I got lots of pictures that look like this:

I’m sure to win contests for my photography skills.

The whole episode made me think about how our holiday photo sessions have changed over the last three years.

For example.

For Alex’s first Christmas, we took the picture for our card down in Gulf Shores. It was OCTOBER, you see, and I wanted to make sure that we had ample time to get the perfect shot. Notice the white chenille blanket, the smocked ensemble, the crashing waves, the perfect lighting.

That afternoon at the beach provided 40 or 50 possible options for the Christmas card, mainly because all we had to do was put Alex on the blanket and make funny noises. He couldn’t crawl, couldn’t walk, and really those are your optimal child photography conditions. It was a great day.

For his second Christmas, the little man was much more mobile and much more opinionated. So I decorated the house within an inch of its life, put Alex in a Christmas sweater, and tried to take the perfect picture. And while we had more than a few images that looked like this –

– we finally ended up with a sweet little picture for the card:

Last year I had a two year old, didn’t even bother to decorate the tree before pictures because he’d just want to pull off the ornaments (LOOK! SOMETHING SHINY!), and I ended up with lots of shots like this one (notice the TOWEL under the tree – a real touch of KLASS):

By the end of our “session” I had nothing for a card, decided to use a picture we’d taken back in the summer at the beach, and was thinking fondly of the days when we were able to just sit him in the floor, make chicken noises, and get one adorable photograph after another.

Which brings us to today.

The outside of the house isn’t decorated. Alex has a cold. But I need a picture for our card.

So I just put him in the driveway with the dogs and let the magic unfold:

Because nothing says “Merry Christmas” quite like a three year old with a runny nose.

Yep. Totally using a picture from the summertime.