Christmas is coming, which means many of us are primping hair and ruffling bows so that we can participate in that most cherished of holiday traditions: getting the family photo taken. This tradition usually unfolds as follows:

After dressing in an actual dress and styling your hair and applying your make-up, you look completely unrecognizable to anyone who knows you, since beauty products have not touched your body in any other capacity since you first went into labour. Once you are satisfied with this transformation, you coax your lovely offspring, who are busy squabbling, into their best clothes so they look spiffy, too. The baby, of course, takes this opportunity to spit up all over your silk blouse and his new outfit, requiring several well-chosen words as you change both of you once again. When you and the kids are finally ready to go, you frantically yell for your adoring spouse, afraid that at any minute renewed spit up or spats will wreck this picture of perfection. When he arrives he looks exactly the same as he always does.

After waiting for 45 minutes in a room full of whiny kids and frantic parents, it is your turn on the photo table, which is covered with what closely resembles a dead polar bear. The 18-year-old photo operator, in an effort to continue with the bear theme, is wildly wagging some dilapidated teddy in front of your baby’s face. This, naturally, results in him wailing and, possibly, spitting up again. By the time you’re finished, you’re exhausted, grumpy, and ready to trade in your family for one of the nice, smiley ones on the wall.

Like most parents, I shared this tradition for a few years. It worked well for Rebecca, my first born and thus my "eager-to-please-so I-can-prove-I’m-perfect" child. Though she was often rendered terrified by the teddy bear wagging photographer, she usually smiled on cue. She continued to smile even when we added little Katie, who decided to squirm and spit instead. Indeed, all the pictures we have of Katie taken at these studios before she’s a year and a half involve her spitting. She liked it. She spit and squirmed, and Rebecca smiled.

Once she was a year and a half, Katie finally decided that the wagging fur thing was worth a smile. In fact, she was so enthused by it that she decided it was worth a jump, too, so we couldn’t get a focussed picture because she was going up and down, up and down.

Then and there, I made the decision that no sane person should have to go through this charade. Besides, candid photos are so much better, I reasoned, so from now on, we would just take our favourite candid photos and blow them up for our portraits.

Such a decision sounds very lofty and mature. It is, however, entirely impractical if you have more than one child. As anyone with more than one child knows, there simply aren’t any candid photos of this second child (let alone the third or the fourth). Showing your photo album sounds something like this: "Here’s Rebecca’s first smile. Here’s Rebecca’s first giggle. Here’s Rebecca’s first solid poop. Here’s Rebecca’s first step." "Where’s Katie?". "Ummm, let me see, I must have one of her here somewhere. Oh, here she is on this tricycle. She must be, what, two or three?". "And who’s that in the foreground?" "Oh, that’s Rebecca."

My uncle, who is one of quite a large clan, once remarked to me that the first child in a family inevitably has 4,000 pictures taken of him or her within one hour of leaving the womb. In contrast, if the fourthborn has more than twelve pictures taken of him or her by the time he or she is 16, half of them are in a file at the police station.

Today, Katie no longer spits (though we’re still working on the nose picking thing), and she’s getting quite good at sitting still. I’m getting my hair cut this week, so I’m ready to be totally unrecognizable, and Rebecca enjoys sitting nicely, if only to prove she can do so better than her little sister. So before the Christmas rush is over, we shall venture down once more to get a new family portrait. Then, when Katie is all grown up, I’ll be able to prove that yes, indeed, she was actually a part of our family after all.

Do you want to read more columns? Click here.