I seriously have over 100 photos and videos that have Sylvie and Curtis making faces, dancing like a maniac, or dressed in some strange — so strange — way.

(And I love it. Here’s just what I found in the last 30 minutes…)

No one else can pull off this look! The glasses match the purple crown. The child-girl-beard is just the right shade of grey. I do not know if this was for Book Week or Halloween. Or it was simply time to get a silly outfit together. 

The awkward dancing in front of the cameras always made me laugh. You can see in this video that the Ottinger kids brought their high-grade oddity to the stage. Curtis must’ve been about 4. Sylvie was then 7 or 8 years old, maybe. I gladly let the tape roll and let them silly-out. Then they’d come to me to see the footage, to see their performances. This video was a lovely example of not taking life so seriously. 😉

Sylvie learned the two-finger salute — the cool, tough yo that British rockers throw to the camera. She learned it, perfected it, and she sported that look in nearly every photo for the next six months!

Here’s New Year’s Eve’s version of the hand signal. It wasn’t long after that that we started taking “official band photos” or album covers for our mythical music group. The two-fingered salute is in a few of those.

Speaking of band photos — here’s one that I remember taking together. Our camping trip to South Australia brought us to the lovely town of Robe. I remember getting the ice cream, going to the back of the house it was in to a tiki bar. I set the camera up,  Sylvie said,  ‘band photo’, and 10 seconds later — “click.”

The above photo was the result. I didn’t know Sylvie did a Statue of Liberty pose until just 5 minutes ago. I just found this photo.

Fondly, I remember and love the fact that after this photo was taken, no one mentioned it.

We just, silently went back to licking our ice cream cones.