Friday, January 06, 2006

Skating on the edges of legality

See this picture? It's Sam's school picture...from daycare. It never would have occurred to my pre-Sam self that school pictures would start so young. At any rate, you're looking at the results of $55 of picture orders; a scanned copy of the original. This issue is that when I got the first set (yes, that does mean there were two sets) I accidentially recycled the packet of pictures. No, I don't want to discuss the stupidity that led me to do this. And I did it right before Christmas cards would have gone out if I'd actually sent out Christmas cards.

Luckily, the photographer has a website where I could order more so I did. Of the wrong sizes. I should have checked my order. Now I'm hesitant to go back and order the right size and drop a bunch more cash when I just want a stack of wallet-sized pictures so I'm debating if I should just have a bunch of prints made from the scanned version. Should I?

He's posed just like the seniors in their yearbook pictures, isn't he? Now if I were good with Photoshop (or actually owned it) I'd superimpose his future face on the picture for giggles and grins.

This morning Sam was doing whatever he could to make sure that I had to watch him like a hawk (playing in the litterbox anyone? Ewww!) so I decided to take him downtown to maintain my sanity. We took a four block walk from my work (to scan the picture) to see Judyboo (who, it turns out, is off in California wine country) and it only took a half an hour to traverse those four blocks. Only? What didn't we stop to look at? How many pigeons did we stop to chase? How many times did we turn around and walk in the wrong direction? How many things did Sam try to pick up with his semi-functional but unremovable shoulder-length mittens?

We stopped at Bruegger's for a bagel. He's finally getting a little better in restaurants but is still nowhere near ready for primetime. Tedius one-sided conversation from our table:

"Sam, we don't put our feet on the table."

"Sam, we don't yell in restaurants."

"Sam, sit down when you're eating."

"Sam, sit down when you're eating."

"Sam, sit down when you're eating. "

Of course, then I started thinking about something I'd read - you may have to sign up under any pseudonym and fake email address to read this but it's free and I've never gotten any spam:

http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/national/09bakery.html?ex=1136696400&en=25e2d737be979953&ei=5070

I'm not the least bit offended by his sign "children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices when coming to A Taste of Heaven" and I'm sympathetic to people who don't want their dinners/lunches/snacks/coffee disrupted by loud unsupervised children so I do whatever I can to keep Sam's behavior in line, including leaving the restaurant. But he's got to learn how to behave at some point so we're using casual family-style reasturants as his training wheels. Did he irritate anyone today? Hard to say. No one changed seats to get away from us though.

My favorite sign regarding children is the one at the library:

Unattended Children Will Be Given an Expresso and a Free Puppy

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice photo! Good thing, too, since it cost $55!

I am happy to receive mine in scanned reprint format. But only if you use the savings to buy him an Espresso. Better yet, YOU have the Espresso, and he can have Quaaludes.

I think I am onto something here.

Anne V said...

'ludes all around man! Uh, woman.

And I will have the expresso since there are still nights when Sam thinks that sleep is optional.

Anonymous said...

Gasp. But wouldn't scanning those pictures be ILLEGAL? ha ha

I read that article when it came out. I can totally sympathize with that cafe owner, even though I have two kids. I get annoyed with people who don't control their kids in restaurants too.

Anonymous said...

Adorable picture!
I took a different tack on the restaurant issue. I just kept my kids out of places without playplaces until they were old enough to go elsewhere. My kids' restaurant behavior wasn't as much a factor of "practice" as much as it was a matter of age and personality. IOW, I had to wait until Madison was ready.

Dang, Brueggers sounds GREAT!

Anne V said...

LisaVT, you owe me a visit, you know you do so come on out and I'll buy you a bagel. Hey, I even brought some home yesterday so we had them today too.