Today I was very excited to get my first article written about me in The Herald Sun. I mean my own article about The Happy Mum Handbook. Wow, what a buzz?!
This, of course, meant a photographer needed to come to my house and take some snaps of me and my two boys, Cody and Ryan.
This was all very last minute, so after madly running around cleaning my disgustingly messy house (due to Ryan’s creativity fetish with the scissors and any paper he can find) I turned my attention to how I looked.
Of course this opportunity came two days before my hair appointment to take care of my roots and when the boys are in desparate need of a haircut. However I persevered with my mop and did the best I could – with loads of hairspray to get it just right. (If the truth be told, I even practiced which side I would tilt my head to get the best shot, lol).
I had envisaged the photographer coming around with his camera, sitting us neatly on the couch, (hopefully avoiding the feral food stains all over it – maybe he could edit them out) taking a happy snap of the three of us and be out the door in a half hour tops.
The photographer arrives and informs us that this would take a while and require MANY different shots and promptly ushered us out to the back yard.
Well so much for my perfectly layered hair, because there I was laying on my back on the cold, damp grass with my two diva boys wriggling around – not co-operating.
“It’s too bright.” The sun’s hurting my eyes” (sun in melbourne – yeah right!) “I don’t want to do it” etc etc. And I thought I was the diva being worried about my hair.
We were running out of bribes….and fast. I could see that the photographer was starting to get a little antsy, with responses such as “you boys are disappointing me, I thought you were big boys”. It was a feeble attempt to regain control, but it didn’t work.
We bribed with chocolate, a special surprise, a trip to McDonalds (playground time included) and finally agreed on chocolate sundaes after dinner. That seemed to do the trick, but only if we agreed to take the photo inside.
But guess what…..photo didn’t look good inside so it was back to the green, damp grass again, only this time, only Cody was on his side, I was on top and Ryan was on top of me.
This worked, now it was time for smiles and staying still (an almost impossible ask of poor energetic Ryan.) So how on earth did we manage to achieve this?
Sadly we resorted to “Daddy is a bumhead”. “Daddy did a fooss (a fart for the uninitiated)” and “silly bums, silly bums”.
Yes, I lowered my standards on teaching social etiquette to my kids so I could get a great photo to promote my book and make me and my kids look good. Is that child exploitation?
So now tell me, who’s the diva, is it me who was more nervous about getting her photo taken than doing an interview with the actual journalist, or was it my kids who had to have just the right conditions and giving chocolate demands in order to get the job done?
Hopefully this was just our first initiation into the world of media, and hopefully the kids get better at it…..or McDonalds is going to see a dramatic increase in their profits.