New York mom Nicole Bartlett is still trying to figure out why the photos of her 3-year-old daughter didn’t turn out exactly how she planned.
Bartlett’s hilarious post about daughter Alina’s wrong photo shoot day went viral on social media in October. Months later, the mother of one tells PEOPLE she still has “no idea what happened” that left the little girl looking completely different in her photos than she did when she walked out the door that morning.
In a side-by-side image he shared on Instagram, Bartlett showed viewers what Alina looked like before she left for school that morning, with her hair neatly brushed and her headband away from her face. Then she revealed the results of Alina’s photo day, where the girl’s appearance changed quite a bit.
“It was her first day of painting. I made her a little early and explained to her that it’s a special day, you get some hairspray and hair gel,” says Bartlett. “I had really, really high hopes. I usually let her wear her hair up for school just to keep it out of her face and stuff. But for picture day, I wanted to let it down.”
“Her classroom was scheduled for morning painting around 9:30. So I thought, ‘Perfect. She’s going to get off the bus, eat breakfast, and go straight to painting,'” the mom of one recalls, adding with a laugh, “that didn’t happen.” .”
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Bartlett says she couldn’t wait to get her daughter’s photos back because she hoped they would be “the perfect Christmas idea for the grandparents, aunts and uncles.”
“When I opened her backpack and saw the purchase order with the picture options, all four looked almost the same. I laughed, but I was a little upset,” she admits. “I said, ‘I’d like to ask her teacher if they have retakes.’ And my mom said, ‘She’s in preschool, Nicole. They don’t have reshoots.’ ”
“Once I really started thinking about it and showing everyone the pictures, they said, ‘This is going to be shown on her wedding day. This is better than you could have imagined,'” she continues. “So we ended up ordering a huge package, and everyone still gets their framed picture.”
As for what happened to Alina before she took the picture, Bartlett says he “has some theories.”
“I think when she went to school, she played really hard,” she says. – I’m really glad that she smiled, to be honest.
Bartlett says she decided to share the pictures of her daughter after initially posting a before and after picture on her Instagram stories.
“I’ve had a few people message me and say, ‘Post this. It’s going to go viral.’ And I thought, I don’t know, I’m not a big person on social networks,” she recalls. “I ended up doing it and it hit home right away.”
I got a lot of comments like, ‘I was having a terrible day and then I saw this and it immediately made me smile.’ So I was happy to see that,” she shares. “We’re really excited and it’s kind of cool.”
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Source: HIS Education