Pass the Ice Cream, Please

Getting my children's pictures taken should be considered an Olympic sport. Seriously. On picture day, Luke awakens in the grouchiest mood of all time. He also wakes up with a serious amount of snot plastered all over his nose area and pinning him down the clean that up amid much resistance was enough to make me want to take a tub of ice cream and head back to bed. Once I finally got the car loaded and the boys loaded for our 45 minute drive to Wichita, I realized how bad the weather was. Cold and rainy and 50 mile per hour winds. I exaggerate not. The thought crosses my mind just to reschedule, but no, the car is loaded, the boys are ready...we're committed and there is no turning back. Once we get there Luke decides to control the situation best he could by pretending to be shy, clinging to his mother, and resisting pretty much everything they wanted him to do. "I don't want to sit in da chair!" What's that they say about the terrible twos?? Yeah, we're there. The photographers tried to make me feel better by saying that 2-year-olds are their most difficult subjects and this is by far not the worst they've seen. Still embarrassing and exhausting. When they did get him to smile, he pretty much only gave his "shy" smile, which includes his lovely tongue sticking out. See exhibit A:

and Exhibit B: (there are about 90 more like these)

But we did get about 2 pictures of him with a somewhat normal smile. I really mean literally 2 pictures. And here they are:
Now don't get me wrong, I love my Luke. He can be the sweetest child in the world and does make me smile each day. He's a great helper around the house and there is nothing like listening to him sing Jesus Loves Me while we're driving down the road. But this child has a serious bit of independence and strong-willed behavior. We're working on it. I've read "Don't Make Me Count to Three" by Ginger Plowman. The point of the book is to work on training the heart to obey...to focus on changing the heart instead of just getting the behavior to change, and to use God's word when doing so. And to expect immediate obedience, as delayed obedience is disobedience. Kids will live up to what we expect of them. If they know they don't have to obey until "3", they will never obey at "1". It's good stuff. Anyway...please tell me I'm not the only one out there dealing with the new-found independence and rebellion of a 2 year old!
Oh, but he really does love his baby brother.
This child, on the other hand, posed like a champ.

I got this one in black and white. His shirt is more of a rust color, but looked bright orange in the pictures for some reason which I didn't really like.

I liked this one because it made his blue eyes really pop. I guess I'm still surprised that with Chad's brown eyes and my green/hazel eyes, we had a blue-eyed son. Chad still thinks they're going to change, but I think they're here to stay. Either way, he is a little darling.