Say "cheese!" (with no complications, please?)

School portrait day is always an odd sort of thing: Dress your kids up as best as you can. Comb their hair. Check their faces for stray toothpaste and debris. Send them off to school with checks large enough to buy a decent amount of groceries. Then, wait weeks to see the results, and when you do, feel lucky if curious hands or overcrowded backpacks haven’t mangled them. What an exercise in trust!

By my experience, the process is even more precarious when boys are involved. Boys typically don't care as much as girls about their appearance. Their hands are more curious and their backpacks more overcrowded than girls'. And, a boy can lose a check or an envelope of photos without batting an eye just as easily as he can get mud or food on his shirt because he’s just...well, being a boy. And if you're really lucky, he can make a goofy face when asked to smile simply because the feeling to do so struck him for no particular reason.

Historically, we've had pretty good luck with school photos. Granted, some have come out better than others. But overall, the results have all been decent or better. Still, that doesn't make me any less nervous each time we have to do the "write out a check, primp and prep, and cross your fingers" routine. Last month was no exception, when Zach had portraits taken on just the third day of school. At that point, we were still trying to figure out when to leave in the morning in order to arrive at the kids’ new schools on time. It was one extra hurdle we just didn’t need, and we basically left him to his own devices and plowed ahead.

Later that day, Zach said he felt confident the photo shoot had gone well. I hoped he was right, at least encouraged by the fact that, as the youngest students in the school, sixth graders had done their photos immediately after arriving on campus. I crossed my fingers and quickly forgot about the photos until today, when Zach surprised me by saying he'd received them. He said they'd come out well, like he always does. And then he seemed a bit disappointed when, upon arriving home and distracted by a very tired Zienna, I didn't immediately ask to see them.

Once home, he pulled the photos out of his backpack and thrust them into my hands. Judge for yourself, but I’m not going to lie--I was speechless. I know he's my kid and I'm just a tad biased, but I was blown away by how handsome--and grown up--was the face looking back at me from that expensive, glossy paper. And that’s even though I see his mug every single day!

Good thing the kid got Kelly's genes.

One down and one to go. Zoë’s still young enough that anything can happen before or during her portrait sitting. But she's got a good track record, and this year, she’s got shorter, harder-to-mess-up hair. If her portraits come out half as well as Zach's did, we'll have had nothing to worry about.

At least until next year.