This picture was taken when Cody was exactly one week old. A friend of a friend of a friend is a very good newborn photographer in Utah. She was in Chicago to teach a workshop and needed a baby model. I was SO SO SO excited to go get some nice pictures of him taken!! Unfortunately it turned out to be a very disappointing experience. It was all the way downtown and they were running very late so we had been sitting there for a good 45 minutes before they even started on the newborn workshop session. By the time she wanted Cody he was ready to nurse and go home. It didn't help that she kept trying to wrap him up in this strange gauzy cloth and his long little legs just kept stubbornly shooting right now. Then there was the scowl he kept giving her. She wanted him to sleep but he just kept staring her down and sticking his feet out and so she took a couple shots of him and moved on to the other baby model she had. This baby was teeny tiny and so very sleepy. She was a dream baby to work with. The photographers flocked to her like crazy to learn how to take good shots of this little angel who did was she was supposed to. The Photographer told me not to leave because she wanted to try again. I sat there for 2.5 hours. She never took his pictures again. As I was leaving I felt the exhaustion and disappointment fall very heavy on me and was difficult to not burst into tears right there. Then the building people wouldn't validate my parking because I wasn't a paying person, despite their website no explaining that. I get to the parking garage and it was locked! I couldn't get in! So fussy Cody and I stood outside the garage door waiting for a car to enter or exit so we could run in behind it. Finally someone pulled out and we darted in only to find out the parking meter machine only takes cash!! What??!?! I have never seen a machine only take cash. So I check my parking bill...$36. They had an ATM there so I grudgingly went to withdraw forty dollars when the machine kept declining my card. I called Ben and he said "didn't you see the letter from the bank? they sent new debit cards and cancelled your current one yesterday." Nope, didn't see that. Also didn't have my credit card pin to use it at the ATM. So I was 35 minutes from home with the van stuck in a parking garage with no money, a fussy baby, and the weight of a somewhat embarrassing and very disappointing day. I completely broke down bawling, not quite to hyperventilating but that would soon come. Then Finally!! some good luck. A nice women came walked through the lobby and left to head outside, then she came back in to ask if I was alright and very generously gave me $40 to pay for parking so I could leave. Ms. Martin was her name. I sobbed big exhausted tears the whole way home where I found the rest of my family and mom looking at me like I was crazy. The photographer promised she'd send the couple pictures she took. She never did. But then one day I got an email from another photographer who was one of the "students" at the workshop. She'd shot this picture of me with Cody while I was trying to calm him down and she thought I might like it. Looking at it now and writing this (6 months later) still brings tears to my eyes. All I wanted was a beautiful picture of Cody and that to the thoughtfulness of this nice photographer I have a picture that not only is beautiful but reminds me of all the blessings I do have in this life. Things don't always go as planned. Life is hard. Sometimes things just suck and people make you feel low and embarrassed and bad about yourself. But if you can survive it and get through it great things happen in life as well.
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