Yesterday I had a family come in for a family photo.  Their little boy was 16 months, cute blond bruiser (for his age), but he was not having any of this "picture" stuff!

It started because his parents had given him a lollipop on the way in, and he hadn't finished it yet.  So mom had to take his sucker away for him to have his picture taken...you can imagine we were off to a great start! *sarcasm*

We tried letting him play with a few of our toys.  But they didn't want the toys in the picture because they didn't really fit with the background...so mom had to take the toys away too!  He was NOT a happy camper at this point.  He was screaming and wailing and throwing himself backwards on the ground...if you've had small children you know exactly what I'm talking about, right?  Mom was absolutely flabbergasted, said she'd never seen him like this, and he'd been fine all this morning up until now.  I felt bad for her.  She was obviously totally stressed, and the dad just thought it was funny (I did too, to be honest!)

So we decided to just let him motor around the studio for a bit, sort of walk the crankies off.  Well, kids that age are smarter than you give them credit for.  I don't think he objected to having his picture taken all that much.  I think he put the pieces together and realized that, so long as he cried whenever he was in front of the camera, we would let him run around and play with the cool new toys some more!  So for the rest of the session he was totally engrossed in our toys and as soon as his butt hit the posing table he would go into meltdown mode.

Next we thought we'd try having dad carry him around on his shoulders for a bit, and then quick as lightning sit down on a stool and I'd snap the picture before the kid could switch gears from laughing to crying.  This is where things really got interesting.  Dad got him laughing alright, but as he got in front of the camera I noticed the kid had hunched over with his face close to his dad's (balding) head.  Then all of a sudden dad says, "Ow!"

The kid was BITING his dad on the head! I mean really trying to have a good gnaw at him, om nom nom nom.  I could tell this was going to be a serious issue for the parents to deal with later on, but oh my gosh it was hilarious to see it!

Finally as a last resort we gave him this giant teddy bear, bigger than he was, to pose with.  I turn to my camera, getting lined up, I turn back around and what is the kid doing?  He's trying to gnaw on the BEAR'S head!

I came thisclose to saying that at least they could dress him as a zombie for Halloween, but seeing how flustered mom was, I thought better of it.  I bet the dad thought of it though ;)