First Bath

I. Love. This. Picture.

Other than a little fiddling with the contrast and putting in in black and white, I wish I could take credit for how cool it looks. But I can't--the sun was coming through the window of the hospital room at just the right angle with just the right brightness and the rays landed in just the right place to really give it the effect of studio lighting. I love too that Kiddo provides his own caption: "I'm the big brother." I love the look of care and concentration on Kiddo's face, and the obvious gentleness with which he's handling the cloth.

Seeing one of my children helping to take care of the other gets me a little verklempt, too.

I'd say I'm proud of this picture, but that would imply that I did the work to intentionally compose it like this. Nope, I just got lucky. Right place, right time. But as they say, better lucky than good, right?

(By the way, to see the picture full-size, click on it to enlarge.)

First Bath

(c) 2008 by Matt Schur

LH

More baby pictures...

...because right now, uploading photos is just plain easier than trying to string together coherent thoughts. =) Suffice it to say that all is well...baby's doing great, Kiddo's been an amazing big brother, and mom and dad are happily sleepy. Or is it sleepily happy?

Those first few weeks with a newborn, you stop thinking about time in terms of daytime and nighttime, and instead switch to a mindset of sleep-time and awake time. And in our case, baby came home with some jaundice, which is caused by high levels of bilirubin, which apparently is something the body gets rid of by pooping it out. And in order to poop a lot, one needs to eat a lot. And when one is a baby, that means mom and dad need to feed you a lot. Which for Sweetie and I has meant feeding about every 2 hours since baby came home from the hospital a little over a week ago. 2 hours from the beginning of each feeding...not the end. So if you figure each feeding takes about 45 minutes, we're talking maybe a little over an hour between the end of one feeding and the beginning of another. Round the clock.

I'm not complaining, mind you...but I just realized that with all of this, we've kind of retreated into a little "baby cocoon." Our own little world of 2 hour feeding and sleeping cycles.

An interesting sidenote...Saturday night/Sunday morning, I got to watch the clock on our cable box switch to daylight savings time. It said 1:59 AM, then all of a sudden it said 3:00. I always wondered how that happened.

Well, I said I wasn't going to write much and here I am rambling along. So here's the promised pictures. I'd better get going.

After all, it's almost time for baby to eat again.

Ain't she a cutie?!?!

Does a dad's heart good to see scenes like this...

LH

Commence Heart Melting...

Okay, I thought having one child led to heart-melting moments. Well, we're finding that having a second child around only multiplies those moments exponentially...

Click on the video:

LH

Welcome to the world...

On February 28 at 7:43 AM, we welcomed our new little girl (not sure yet what her blog nickname will be) into the world. She was 6 pounds and 7 ounces, and measured 19 inches long. She's a beautiful little girl (obviously taking after her mother!) with a pretty full head of hair and an easygoing temperment. She's just a little sweetheart, and we all just feel so incredibly blessed to have her as part of our family. Kiddo has been a very proud big brother! He loves to hold her and talk to her, and even sternly told his mom and dad once to stop talking because his sister was trying to sleep! We are sleep-deprived but otherwise doing well...keep us in your prayers!

LH