You've stumbled upon the blog of Paul Malan. I love my family, I love to write, I love to ride my bikes, and I love to take pictures. Maybe someday I'll think of something clever or arresting to say right here.Most of the time, four is not considered a particularly large number. There are a handful of situations in which four really would seem shocking--just ask anyone who has four arms--but four, perched between "a few" and "several", usually not considered "a handful" but occasionally included in "a small handful", is mostly unremarkable. That might be bad news for any of us who thought to boost our ego by boasting of four dollars in our wallet, four doors on our car, four books in our collection, or even four children in our family, but that won't stop me from trying.
I have four children. I know a lot of you have more than four, and you probably just shrugged, raised a brow, or perhaps even felt a tinge of envy for the simple life of having just four children. I'm the youngest of seven kids, my wife sat at the big kids' table in her family of seven, and I have siblings, neighbors and co-workers with five and six children, but no matter how much comparing I do, four is a huge number. I'm glad to have all four, can't even imagine my world without them, but even considering adding a fifth child makes me crave Xanax and a darkened room. Though I love them all dearly, four children is about as many as I am equipped to parent. If ever I begin to wonder about having a fifth, I simply close my eyes and remember what it's like to have family pictures taken.
To be honest, this "If ever I begin to wonder about having a fifth" nonsense is just a lame segueway into the mess that is family portraiture. Extorting camera-friendly smiles from one toddler was bad enough, but now that we have four children, which you realize means eight little wandering eyes, four un-smiling mouths, and no fewer than twenty personalities, picture day is something to dread. (This is why our family pictures are usually out of date, by the way. And as long as I'm making excuses, let's blame the kids for any other irritating quality you may have noticed about me. My disdain for talking to you, any of you, on the telephone? Blame the kids. Active avoidance of any social setting? Kids. General lack of patience, kindness, and charity? Kids! If this works out, maybe we will have another so I can get away with even more of my nonsense.)
I completely sidetracked myself, but it's my blog and my editor quit (it was the kids' fault) so you had to suffer through the diversion. My point is, we have four kids. Picture day with four kids is an exhausting challenge, even when the photographer is famous Uncle Craig, but we did get some nice pictures out of it. We weren't able to get four smiles at a time, but I think we all know whose fault that was...
