CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT

Dear Mummy,

We're never quite sure what we've done to deserve the cruel and unusual punishment that you subject us to, around this time, every year.  Isn't Santa the judge and jury over naughty and nice?  Unfortunately this bizarre event has appeared to drift into some kind of sick ritual.  No doubt, a tradition to be feared in years to come and dreaded as December clicks over on the calendar.

You call this torture "Our Christmas Photo" shoot.

At first, your excitement is a little contagious, as you flaunt our newly purchased Christmas outfits and entice us into them, promising endless amounts of fun and frolics. Don't get us wrong, we love this season, with the mysterious fat jolly man in the red suit and the fact that you decorate our house to a point where it looks like Christmas simply threw up in our lounge room.  This, however, obviously isn't enough, as you forge ahead and enhance the scene of the crime by preparing additional props and set decorations to create a suitable 'Christmas' atmosphere.

Mummy, we both suspect that you have deluded visions of candy canes, mistletoe and cheeky magical elves dancing a jig in your head when you first start this charade. For some reason though you become increasingly irritable when we don't conform to your specific ideas and strike your predetermined poses.  Your frustration appears to grow proportionately with our increasing boredom.  Admittedly we do have 'bright and shiny' syndrome and become
easily distracted, but as you're fully aware that we only have a limited attention span, we fail to understand why you insist on taking multitudinous photos.


We believe your demands are a little unrealistic and think you should reconsider your requests for us 'both' to look in the general vicinity of the camera and for us 'both' to smile at the same time.  There's also no need for your gratuitous sighs when we become restless and start to strip the Christmas tree, wrestle each other, use Christmas props as weapons, cry for no reason or simply meander off in different directions.


By the time you've taken hundreds of happy' snaps, apparently "searching for gold" (?), we figure even you've realised it's become a bit of a nightmare as we hear you grumbling something about "not working with animals or kids".   We tried to remind you that this was going to be the inevitable outcome, just like previous years, by attempting to escape and run away.  However, you didn't appear to listen or conveniently forgot and blocked it out, as you continually insisted on preventing our 'runners' and dragged us back to the photo shoot.


Mummy, we may not have a democratic vote in this torturous tradition but for future reference, and for everyone's sake, please remember, if you haven't got the shot you want in the first five minutes, then you'll never get it!

Love Ollie and Linc xoxo

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE ... FROM OLLIE AND LINC XOXO