I must say, this is a first for me! All three of my children fell asleep on my lap. I honestly didn’t know this was possible, but I love it. I know everything looks perfectly peaceful and easy in this picture, but I assure you, nothing about this picture was easy. I think you’d like to hear how this picture came about. After lunch (their normal nap time) the boys decided they wanted to go outside and play. I told them that they needed to do some reading and lessons before they could go outside. Oliver wanted to try reading One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, and of course Benjamin wanted to be right there to watch. He fell asleep within minutes. Now it was also Mirabelle’s nap time and she was getting extremely wiggly and Oliver had a hard time reading with her kicking the book. Luckily her bottle and pacifier were within arms reach on the coffee table next to me. So I suggested that we wait for her to fall asleep before we continue reading. We played a fun, quiet whispering game, silently giggling at her sleepy facial expressions. Then things became silent. Oliver was now asleep. Mirabelle suddenly ran out of milk and started to squirm. With my left arm wedged under Benjamin’s head, I managed to barely reach the pacifier with a couple fingertips and fling it over perfectly onto her belly to where I could then put it in her mouth with my slightly freer right hand. Within seconds, I had three peaceful, sweaty, sleeping little heads. However, compared to this next part, getting them to sleep was easy.
With any perfect moment like this, it’s always nice to have a picture. Luckily, our Nikon DSLR was also on the coffee table next to me. But I decided against my better judgement not to pull the same stunt I did with the pacifier with a two-pound, hard, plastic camera. While I reached for the strap of the camera with my left hand, I suddenly became self-conscious of how I looked and I noticed the weight of the children had pulled the neckline of my tank-top to below my nipples. So, in one attempted fluid movement to the left, I managed to get one finger into the strap of the camera while I pulled up my tank-top up with my teeth causing my neck to cramp and get a red mark from the scratchiness of my beard. After lifting the camera (and sliding the objects underneath it off the table), I was finally ready to start taking pictures. The first few pictures were taken with my left hand, for I had not yet figured out how to get it into my right hand. I then managed to rest Benjamin’s head on the arm of the chair, hold the camera up, and successfully take pictures of my sleeping kids and my hairy armpit. I actually didn’t mind my armpit being in the picture, but thought it might be distracting nonetheless. Since my left hand was now free I than began to explore better angles for the picture because I wanted to be sure everyone could see their closed eyelids. Next, I explored angles with my right hand having to bump Oliver around quite a bit. This picture, however, was taken on a ten-second timer with the camera precariously balanced on my foot which was resting on my knee. I was also counterbalancing the weight of the camera by holding the strap. After flinching from nearly dropping the camera twice, Oliver woke up because his leg was uncomfortable, and everything unraveled from there.
