Oh, so much drama surrounding picture day.
Jafta’s was last week. The night before, we went to a pumpkin patch. And by pumpkin patch, I mean a bunch of bouncehouses in the parking lot of a mall. We let the kids jump to their heart’s content, and then let them get their faces painted. (Side note: the gal who painted their faces was a lovely young woman who was also transracially adopted from foster care. She told us her story and proceeded to thank us for adopting our boys, and how much she loves seeing adoptive families. Then she started bawling, and then I started too, and the next thing I know she and I are embracing and doing the ugly cry right there in the middle of the pumpkin patch.)
Jafta got a skull painted on his cheek. He is a little obsessed with all things “scary” right now. On the way home, he reminded us that it was picture day, and then started talking about how awesome it would be that his face would have a skull on it in the picture.
And of course, I’m like, um . . . . about that. We’re gonna have to wash that off before school, buddy.
Then he starts wailing like we just told him Santa isn’t real. He is totally devastated, and sooo mad at us, at which point I blame it on the school and act like I’m just as disappointed.
“I KNOW, Jafta. Those darn school rules! IF ONLY!! Having a skull on your school picture would have been so awesome. Your grandma would have loved that. And it would have been such a conversation piece in the class photo. Life is so unfair!” (shaking my fist at the sky in solidarity).
Jafta was inconsolable. He was finally calmed by my suggestion that I would paint something scary on his hand. So here is Jafta, on his picture day, with my handrawn spider on his hand. With Lancome Artliner in Noir.
(To be honest, I’m terribly concerned that the pose he’s striking in this photo is what I will see when his school picture proofs come home. I mean, really, what are the chances he did not work his hand up into the frame somehow? Very slim.)
Speaking of makeup and picture days . . . Kembe, in the Murphy’s Law of picture days, has a HUGE scrape across his cheek. Well, really, it is mostly healed. So now it is just a large area lacking any pigmentation. I confess that when I filled out the picture forms, I checked the “touch up blemishes” box and paid an extra $6, knowing that this is probably not what they meant. I also had the bright idea of buying some concealer to cover it for the day. But let me just tell you – Target? Apparently only sells concealer for people as dark as Buff Beige. So tomorrow I will again be attempting to use my own eyeliner on one of my children for picture day. Only this time, it will be MAC in Espresso.
I will also be attempting to comb matts of frozen yogurt out of India’s hair in the morning, because I totally forgot about picture day tonight and didn’t wash her hair. It looked so bad at bedtime that I had the thought that the teacher would judge me if I sent her to school like that. Then I shrugged and decided I didn’t care. But now, I get to have her greasy hair memorialized for the whole class.
In other news, the Celebration of Color was going well. Until tonight, when Jafta informed me that tomorrow is yellow, and he would be requiring yellow pants in addition to the yellow shirt I laid out. I laughed a little and told him that he didn’t have yellow pants. He let me know that this was GRAVELY SERIOUS and that if he didn’t have the pants, that it wasn’t really “in the spirit of the Celebration of Color”. To which I really wanted to say, yellow pants would be a Celebration of Lame, but instead said:
“Jafta, no one has yellow pants.”
To which he replied, in an angry huff:
“I KNOW A KID!!!”
Ah, this week oughta be fun.