Why, oh, why did someone not warn us about the hospital provided baby photos! The NICU nurses asked a few days ago if we wanted Dean's picture made for the hospital website. We thought that it would be a simple one-picture deal where they brought in a polaroid, so we agreed. We managed to dress Dean up in a cute outift despite all of his wires poking out... We finally got him all fixed up and waited patiently for the photographer to show up. A few minutes passed, and to our surprise, in walks a chubby little mexican midget (ok so she wasn't really a midget per say, but she couldn't have been a centimeter over 4 feet tall. She was so short, she had to request a step stool just to be able to see into Dean's crib). She had a massive cart decked out with a computer and photo equipment. She was sort of soft spoken and had the communication skills of a shy 3rd grader. If her communication skills weren't lacking enough, her computer skills definately made up the difference (we'll get to that later).
Here's the scenario. We're in the NICU with dozens of premature babies and we're waiting on the doctor to arrive at any minute to perform a cicrumcision on our son. We're already a little on edge because of what's about to happen with Dean, so we think that this midget chick will realize what's going on and snap her picture for the hospital website and get the heck out of everyone's way. If only it could have been that easy...
The midget grabs her step stool and reaches up on her cart to get her camera. So the shoot begins... almost. She attempts to snap the first picture but nothing happens. Turns out she had accidentally left the camera on at her last shoot and run the batteries down. Strike ONE!
So we sit and wait for her battery to charge for a few minutes. Our midget finally gets it charged and begins what would turn out to be an hour long photo shoot. She took a ridiculous amount of pictures of all sorts and put Dean in just about every conceivable pose known to man. (Keep in mind that Dean needs all the sleep he can get right now in between feedings. The last thing he needs is having his body contorted into photographic poses and bright lights flashing in his eyes.) Just when we thought we were nearing the end, she decides that she wants us in a few pictures with Dean. Strike TWO!
You should know at this point that we had no idea that this photo shoot would even be happening today and weren't looking too photogenic. I hadn't shaven in a few days and had on a cammo baseball cap. I pretty much looked like a serial killer who had been living out in the woods for a few weeks. While Jess was beautiful as ever, she hadn't gone to great lengths with her wardrobe selection either. Fashion is usually low on the priority list for most women who have just pushed another human being out of their "lady business". So off we go with MORE pictures. At this point our midget photographer even begins to drag the nurses into the shoot and makes them hold up white sheets as a backdrop to complete her shots. And boy am I glad they did! No one should be without a picture that makes their newborn appear to be lying dead in a casket. He was completey wiped out and lying lifeless in a stark white padded box, surrounded by pillowy white sheets. Just the sort of thing you dream of framing and hanging over the fireplace mantle. Seriously, I'll have to find the pic and post it here. It was awful!
Now, at this point we realize that the midget is going to try and sell us a package of her photos. Strike THREE! Jess quickly piped up and told her we're weren't interested and wouldn't be purchasing anything, so you would think at this point that our midget would get a clue and start wrapping things up. But, oh no, we're just getting started!
About this time, the doctor shows up to perform the circumcision. He's standing there waiting for our midget to finish up, but she is clueless. The thought never crossed her mind that this guy has a pretty tight schedule to keep and that her photos ,that we weren't even interested in, were the last thing we all wanted to be messing with. Finally, she snaps the last picture and the doctor whisks Dean off to a back room to "clean up his manhood".
The midget then begins with her sales pitch again. She whips out the catalog and shows us every product that they have available. It wasn't good enough for her to just show us the pictures in the catalog either; she had to read the catalog line for line in a torturous fashion. At the end of each product description, she would stop and ask if we would like to buy that particular thing and ask if we had any questions. Let me remind you that Jess has already told her in no uncertain terms that we don't want to buy anything. Apparently, this mexican midget was deaf too! She just kept plowing through her product list. About this time, we begin to hear blood curdling screams from our son in the back room. If we were ever at the end of our rope, it was now.
So, over the sound of Dean screaming bloody murder, our mexican midget moves to the computer. (I told you earlier that we'd be getting to the subject of our midget's computer skills.) To put it in perspective... Have you ever been in line at the grocery store or at Lowes and gotten up to the checkout counter to find that the person checking you out had no clue how to operate the register? A task that should easily take a matter of seconds, ends up taking 20 minutes. While the line behind you begins to stack up, everyone gets frustrated and you want to just rip the keyboard from the checker's hands and just do it yourself... I think we've all been there at some point. Well... that pales in comparison to what were about to experience.
As our chubby little gal sits at the computer, she begins to pull up the photos she has taken. Out of the myriad of pictures, she tells us to pick eight. We have no clue what we're picking them for; we've already told her that we're not buying anything. But she insists that we pick eight. So here we go picking eight pictures, of which we like like zero of them. She loads up all the pictures into her photo editor to find that every single one of them is upside down. Puzzled, she begins to edit every single picture and rotate them back to the proper angle. I wish I could accurately describe the agonizingly slow pace at which she attempted to complete this task, but words simply fall short. For most people, the scroll function on a computer window is a simple task. I wasn't even aware that there are still people on the planet who think you have to click directly on the little up and down arrows over and over to get to the top and bottom of a page. Apparently, I was sorely mistaken. As our midget "hen pecked" her way around the keyboard with her chubby little index fingers, we sat in utter awe at what we were witnessing. At one point, I even began to laugh out loud and had to use Jess as a human shield to hide my laughter. At last, she finishes editing the photos and puts up two pictures at a time and asks us to pick which one we like better. It's was exactly like being at the eye doctor when they do the whole "which one is better" thing. So photo one and two are on the screen and she asks us which one we like better, to which we answer, "Neither." For the next ten minutes we sat there through the torture of "which is better, one or two?" until we whittled the list down to eight pictures. Now it was time for our little midget friend to attempt to use the printer to print us off a proof sheet of eight of the crappiest photographs I have ever laid eyes on. On her way out, she gave us her final sales pitch and gave us an order form that we could use in the event we ever changed our minds. I just looked at Jess with a "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FREAKING KIDDING ME!" look on my face and rolled my eyes. As soon as the midget had left the room, Jess swore to me that what we had just experienced was 100 times worse than the pain of labor. She said that had she known our photo shoot was going to be so painful, she would have asked the nurse for an epidural.
Word to the wise... always decline the hospital photos and should you ever encounter a mexican midget, RUN!!!! (You may be a slow runner, but your legs are longer theirs, so you should be fine...)
(Disclaimer: The writers of this blog are not responsible for any midgets that were offended by this blog entry. And yes, we know that the politically correct term for midget is "little people", but midget just sounds funnier.)
Here's the scenario. We're in the NICU with dozens of premature babies and we're waiting on the doctor to arrive at any minute to perform a cicrumcision on our son. We're already a little on edge because of what's about to happen with Dean, so we think that this midget chick will realize what's going on and snap her picture for the hospital website and get the heck out of everyone's way. If only it could have been that easy...
The midget grabs her step stool and reaches up on her cart to get her camera. So the shoot begins... almost. She attempts to snap the first picture but nothing happens. Turns out she had accidentally left the camera on at her last shoot and run the batteries down. Strike ONE!
So we sit and wait for her battery to charge for a few minutes. Our midget finally gets it charged and begins what would turn out to be an hour long photo shoot. She took a ridiculous amount of pictures of all sorts and put Dean in just about every conceivable pose known to man. (Keep in mind that Dean needs all the sleep he can get right now in between feedings. The last thing he needs is having his body contorted into photographic poses and bright lights flashing in his eyes.) Just when we thought we were nearing the end, she decides that she wants us in a few pictures with Dean. Strike TWO!
You should know at this point that we had no idea that this photo shoot would even be happening today and weren't looking too photogenic. I hadn't shaven in a few days and had on a cammo baseball cap. I pretty much looked like a serial killer who had been living out in the woods for a few weeks. While Jess was beautiful as ever, she hadn't gone to great lengths with her wardrobe selection either. Fashion is usually low on the priority list for most women who have just pushed another human being out of their "lady business". So off we go with MORE pictures. At this point our midget photographer even begins to drag the nurses into the shoot and makes them hold up white sheets as a backdrop to complete her shots. And boy am I glad they did! No one should be without a picture that makes their newborn appear to be lying dead in a casket. He was completey wiped out and lying lifeless in a stark white padded box, surrounded by pillowy white sheets. Just the sort of thing you dream of framing and hanging over the fireplace mantle. Seriously, I'll have to find the pic and post it here. It was awful!
Now, at this point we realize that the midget is going to try and sell us a package of her photos. Strike THREE! Jess quickly piped up and told her we're weren't interested and wouldn't be purchasing anything, so you would think at this point that our midget would get a clue and start wrapping things up. But, oh no, we're just getting started!
About this time, the doctor shows up to perform the circumcision. He's standing there waiting for our midget to finish up, but she is clueless. The thought never crossed her mind that this guy has a pretty tight schedule to keep and that her photos ,that we weren't even interested in, were the last thing we all wanted to be messing with. Finally, she snaps the last picture and the doctor whisks Dean off to a back room to "clean up his manhood".
The midget then begins with her sales pitch again. She whips out the catalog and shows us every product that they have available. It wasn't good enough for her to just show us the pictures in the catalog either; she had to read the catalog line for line in a torturous fashion. At the end of each product description, she would stop and ask if we would like to buy that particular thing and ask if we had any questions. Let me remind you that Jess has already told her in no uncertain terms that we don't want to buy anything. Apparently, this mexican midget was deaf too! She just kept plowing through her product list. About this time, we begin to hear blood curdling screams from our son in the back room. If we were ever at the end of our rope, it was now.
So, over the sound of Dean screaming bloody murder, our mexican midget moves to the computer. (I told you earlier that we'd be getting to the subject of our midget's computer skills.) To put it in perspective... Have you ever been in line at the grocery store or at Lowes and gotten up to the checkout counter to find that the person checking you out had no clue how to operate the register? A task that should easily take a matter of seconds, ends up taking 20 minutes. While the line behind you begins to stack up, everyone gets frustrated and you want to just rip the keyboard from the checker's hands and just do it yourself... I think we've all been there at some point. Well... that pales in comparison to what were about to experience.
As our chubby little gal sits at the computer, she begins to pull up the photos she has taken. Out of the myriad of pictures, she tells us to pick eight. We have no clue what we're picking them for; we've already told her that we're not buying anything. But she insists that we pick eight. So here we go picking eight pictures, of which we like like zero of them. She loads up all the pictures into her photo editor to find that every single one of them is upside down. Puzzled, she begins to edit every single picture and rotate them back to the proper angle. I wish I could accurately describe the agonizingly slow pace at which she attempted to complete this task, but words simply fall short. For most people, the scroll function on a computer window is a simple task. I wasn't even aware that there are still people on the planet who think you have to click directly on the little up and down arrows over and over to get to the top and bottom of a page. Apparently, I was sorely mistaken. As our midget "hen pecked" her way around the keyboard with her chubby little index fingers, we sat in utter awe at what we were witnessing. At one point, I even began to laugh out loud and had to use Jess as a human shield to hide my laughter. At last, she finishes editing the photos and puts up two pictures at a time and asks us to pick which one we like better. It's was exactly like being at the eye doctor when they do the whole "which one is better" thing. So photo one and two are on the screen and she asks us which one we like better, to which we answer, "Neither." For the next ten minutes we sat there through the torture of "which is better, one or two?" until we whittled the list down to eight pictures. Now it was time for our little midget friend to attempt to use the printer to print us off a proof sheet of eight of the crappiest photographs I have ever laid eyes on. On her way out, she gave us her final sales pitch and gave us an order form that we could use in the event we ever changed our minds. I just looked at Jess with a "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FREAKING KIDDING ME!" look on my face and rolled my eyes. As soon as the midget had left the room, Jess swore to me that what we had just experienced was 100 times worse than the pain of labor. She said that had she known our photo shoot was going to be so painful, she would have asked the nurse for an epidural.
Word to the wise... always decline the hospital photos and should you ever encounter a mexican midget, RUN!!!! (You may be a slow runner, but your legs are longer theirs, so you should be fine...)
(Disclaimer: The writers of this blog are not responsible for any midgets that were offended by this blog entry. And yes, we know that the politically correct term for midget is "little people", but midget just sounds funnier.)
Please tell me you have a copy of the casket picture... that is so dreadfully and morbidly funny.
Now that is when you need an epdidural jabbed in your cerebral cortex.