By Daddy Clay Monday, September 1st, 2008

This past Tuesday was clearly the craziest day in the history of DadLabs World Headquarters. I don’t know if I’ve clued you into the fact that this place is not exactly Rockefeller Center. It’s not even as nice as the basement under the janitor’s closet in Rockefeller Center. Our interns, coming straight from UT frat houses find the transition very comfortable. But not so much with civilized, real people. We did scramble around to clean up when we thought Daisy Whitney might be coming by, but the place is still a pit.

So when I looked around the office and saw about twenty moms with newborn babies — little ones crawling through the dust bunnies — I was certain we were about to have a health crisis on our hands.

The whole situation was Troy’s fault.

Our publisher, Quirk Books, had pitched him an idea for the cover of our book. The four of us (Owen, Brad, Troy and I all contributed to the book) all holding newborns, standing in a sea of babies. Troy said, “that sounds great. I don’t need a life. I’ll just spend my next week rounding up babies.” And with a little help from a local casting agent, that’s basically what he did.

All we had for baby bait was a bit of stuff from our good friends and sponsors — a plate and utensil set and bib from Baby Bjorn, and some sunglasses from Baby Banz. Troy thought nobody would go for that, so he invited way more models than we needed. And of course, they all showed up. Babies were absolutely everywhere you looked.

At first, I felt an enormous wave of gratitude that my wife was not there to see the amazing collection of cute babies that were assembled. It was the kind of sight that would make any child-oriented woman get uterus pangs. Even I was momentarily caught up in the cuteness. Momentarily.

When the photographer was ready to shoot, there was a moment of panic. No Owen. His wife had just given birth the night before. We waited as long as we could. The babies were ticking. So with heavy hearts, we trudged into the studio.

We stood on a cyclorama of white paper, donned our lab coats, and the baby wrangler started to load us up with babies. One on each arm. When we got to about baby five, baby one started to cry. By the time all the babies were in place, all of them were crying. The photographer is yelling direction to us to be heard over the din: “Look confident!”

About then the screaming upset one of the babies not in the shot. Soon it is a hellish nursery of banshees that has us all feeling like we are doing something deeply wrong. But at the same time it’s completely hilarious. The lab coats and the screaming babies. Everybody is cracking up. But when we get the shot, it’s hard to tell who is moving quicker, us or the moms. Of course as soon as the babies are back with the moms, it’s all cooing and cuteness. Not good for the Dad self-esteem.

The babies are off to take individual shots, and we’re all feeling thankful that we’ll never have to do that again, when Owen comes through the door.

Just two days after becoming a dad for the second time, looking sleep-deprived and every bit as bedraggled as he should, Owen has somehow mustered the energy and the brownie points to show up for the shoot.

And we’re all horrified.

And Owen doesn’t know that we’re horrified because of the Screaming Baby Picture. He just thinks we’re trying to ace him out of being on the cover, trying to get more airtime for ourselves, overlooking the sacrifice he’s made to be present. Instead of getting irate, he just looks a little puzzled.

Finally we clue in, and instead of trying to explain, we start setting up the shot again. This time the babies go even crazier, because they recognize the setup — plus there are two more of them in the picture. Total baby banshee screaming. Moms fretting and laughing.

Was it worth it? The book releases on Father’s Day 2009. Mindy at Quirk would have kittens if I published the photos here. But I really wish I could.

Tags: babies, books, daddy owen, father's day, moms, photographer
Posted in DadLabs, Parenting Books, Photography |