Perhaps it was my pregnancy. Whatever the reason, at the start of the Advent season last year, as I lay on the couch in a nauseated haze of morning sickness, I hatched a wild plan. This was the year, I told myself, that I would get the children's Christmas picture done early.

Usually, I wait until the last possible moment to have their picture taken. It's tradition. Throughout December, as I collect photographs of other people's charming families, my anxiety builds. Other people's children seem perfectly poised. They model reindeer sweaters and sport flawless haircuts. They sit in neat rows, smiling radiantly. My children, it seems, are never all clean and dressed and smiling at the same time. (I'd settle for just not crying.)

Last year, however, I decided I would manage to get all my children to strike a perfect pose at precisely the same moment in front of a professional photographer. Not only that, but I determined to do it weeks before Christmas. I made an appointment for my five little angels and triumphantly marked the date on the calendar.

I should have known better.

On the afternoon before the day of our appointment, as I was tidying up the bathroom, I made an alarming discovery. A pair of kitchen scissors lay on the counter surrounded by dark clumps of hair. Based on the color of the hair and my children's ages, I made a quick guess. “Ambrose Augustine!”

Dutifully, 4-year-old Ambrose appeared in the doorway. His large green eyes blinked at me innocently. Random patches of baldness mottled his handsome head.

Even with a close crew cut, it took a couple of weeks before Ambrose's home-style haircut was smoothed out enough for a Christmas picture.

The night before our new appointment, I was awakened by 3-year-old Juliette at my bedside. “I don't feel good,” she whimpered. I raced her to the bathroom. Even as I stood holding my vomiting daughter over the toilet, I thought, “This cannot be a stomach virus.” My hopes of a passing case of indigestion were dashed before morning when two of my other children got up and made it to the bathroom just in time.

On the phone the next day, I begged and bargained my way into an all-too-familiar, last-minute appointment less than a week before Christmas. When the day arrived, I bathed, dressed and groomed the children. I duped my husband into accompanying us and together we drove to the studio. We lined up the children in front of a female photographer who looked altogether too young and inexperienced to pull off the miracle I had in mind.

To encourage smiles, my heroic husband stood behind the camera waving his arms wildly and pretending to fall down. His audience hooted with laughter. Instead of “cheese,” he instructed the kids to shout pint-sized obscenities such as “poopy diaper.” They screeched with pleasure.

“Take the picture!” I urged the hesitant photographer as baby Stephen tired of his father's foolishness and reached for me. “It's not going to get any better!”

Afterward, using a process of elimination, we chose a sort of halfway-decent, off-center, not-as-bad-as-the-others picture and ordered an overpriced package of wallet-sized copies. We received the prints just in time to stuff them into Christmas cards and rush them into the mail. So much for perfection.

On Christmas Eve, we put the kids to bed early and stayed up sipping eggnog and wrapping last-minute gifts until 11 o'clock, when we woke them.

We coaxed the kids into red-velvet dresses, buckle shoes and dress pants. We brushed their hair, bundled them into winter coats and carried them, yawning, through the cold black night to their car seats. “Jesus is born!” we whispered as we entered the church.

And he was. Our Lord was present in the manger, on the altar and in our hearts.

Slumped in fuzzy pajamas, Stephen dozed on my shoulder. Pungent incense filled our nostrils and the smoke climbed slowly toward heaven. Joyous carols announced our Savior's birth as I watched candlelight flicker in my children's eyes. I closed my eyes to fix the moment in my memory.

Here at last was my perfect Christmas picture.

Danielle Bean writes from Center Harbor, New Hampshire.