It's hard to take good pictures of kids. Instead of smiling, they might start crying, like they're being tortured in an iron maiden. Also, they don't sit still. They'll turn their heads and stick out their tongues and pick their noses. To quote Calvin's mom from a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, "These pictures will remind us of more than we want to remember."
Well, good news, parents, because Chrissy Teigen came up with a genius hack for taking kids' photos. The Lip Sync Battle host is married to singer John Legend, who looks like the animated aardvark Arthur, and hates when people bring that up. They have two kids together, tw0-year-old Luna and two-month-old Miles. On social media, Chrissy shares hilarious and relatable moments from her life. Like, for example, how she can understand her toddler's 'secret language.'
Recently the couple took Luna to a drug store to get her passport photo taken. This situation is foreign to me, because I didn't get my passport photo until college. See, I grew up in small town Minnesota, and the farthest we traveled was 45 miles, to a slighter bigger town in Minnesota, because they had a mall. But when your parents are globe-trotting millionaire celebrities like Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, your children need passports at a very young age.
Chrissy shared a video of Luna plodding into the drugstore, and captioned it "let's get this shit over with." We all can relate to that feeling, whether it's a passport photo or a driver's license photo. There's an ineluctable feeling of dread, since you know the picture's probably going to suck. In my passport photo and driver's license photo, my expression is grim, and haunted, like I just took a selfie my last day on death row.
But Chrissy knows a clever trick to get a 2-year-old to take a good picture. Her husband, John, holds a white sheet in front of his face, which looks just like the generic passport background. At the same time, he holds his daughter still, with his guiding hands off camera. Yes, it looks ridiculous, and hilarious, to us. But through the eye of the camera everything will appear to be normal. And they take a good shot of Luna pretty easily.
Other parents felt inspired to share experiences taking passport photos of their children. This man's daughter was crying, making for a hilariously awkward picture.
This person pointed out that when everyone said "Cheese," Luna frowned more. Hey, we're not saying this is hack to get a perfect photo. There's only much you can do.
This woman pointed out that you might as well take a bad picture. When you arrive at the airport, you're not going to be looking your best anyway.
Well, now you know to take a better picture of your kids. You might end up looking foolish, but your kid won't.