Camera shy

When Kalina smiles, rainbows appear randomly throughout the house, the cats behave and I magically lose another pregnancy ounce or two. Plus, she's just plain cute. We try, therefore, to encourage this behavior.

While she's all too happy to oblige for antics such as funny noises and songs from Mommy and Daddy doing pushups, the one time she's guaranteed not to smile is, unfortunately, when we're trying to take her picture. (See photo)

Of course, we have to try. On the weekends when Matt's around during the best-mood part of the day, we sometimes make several attempts, one of us waving frantically at the baby, making every funny face imaginable, and the other manning the camera, which she eyes as if it's a life form from another planet (and a hideous one at that). She looks at virtually nothing else this same way.

Does she just not like having her picture taken? Does she think she looks fat on film? (She doesn't as we've tried to tell her.) Maybe she's not happy with her hairstyle, or what she's wearing. Perhaps she's one of those people whose religious beliefs restrict them from having images made of them (don't worry, we'll work on converting her to a more photo-friendly belief system).

Of course, each attempt begins with a happy, smiling baby ("Look, she's smiling a ton, let's get a picture!") and ends with an annoyed, bored little girl who's ready to move on to a new activity ("I've seen the freaky alien creature you all seem to like so much, show me something new now please").

And you should see the lengths we will go to to capture Kalina's smiles on film. We'll sing, dance, tickle her and break out painfully wide smiles ourselves to get her to crack a grin. However, I think we could march a circus through the living room and she wouldn't take her eyes off the camera--and very seriously, worriedly give it a good look-over.

It's the same way for the video camera, by the way, which can also completely stop Kalina in her tracks as she's doing something amazingly cute.

The only exception is my friend Anna, who somehow manages to get Kalina to smile and take a picture at the same time, which truly takes talent.

But for the most part, you'll have to take our word for it that Kalina flashes her smile all the time nowadays, and is cuter than we ever thought possible. We think she's starting to laugh--yesterday she seemed to at the baby in the mirror. Apparently, she thinks that baby's smile is as cute as we do. Too bad she can never get a picture.