Newborn E.J.

One of our first orders of business after bringing E.J. home from the hospital (post-birth) was newborn photos. Actually, we got a jump on the whole thing with an unexpected visit from the hospital newborn photographer, who snapped these for us right there in our hospital room:

Yes, that's right. We already had a professional photographer booked for after the hospital, but the hospital photographer totally suckered us in. Who is going to say no to pictures of their sweet new little squishy baby?! Not us, that's for sure.

So then, two days after being discharged from the hospital, we met up with Lenka of Lenka Kaslasi Photography at her in-home studio for some more professional portraits. First, we got a quick family photo, which is adorable of the majority of our family members, and an excellent reminder of exactly how swollen I got in the few days after birth. (To further illustrate, days after birth I weighed myself on our home scale, and I had only lost about 1.5 lbs since before birth. Considering E.J. alone weighed over 8 lb, I would say I was holding onto a smidge of water weight.) But, it's our first professional portrait as a family of four, and with those three other cuties in the photo, who's looking at me, anyway?

I also really wanted a good portrait of Ellie and E.J., but Ellie was in a very "two-year-old" mood at that moment (read: painfully uncooperative). We did manage to get one sweet smooch shot, though:

And the rest of the session was all about the star of the show, E.J. Of course, he chose this time to be more awake than he had yet been in his life, when all the photographer wanted was for him to be asleep. (He also pooped on some of her props, because of course he did.) My hormonal, hot-flashing, swollen postpartum self was stressed to the max, thinking the whole photoshoot was going to end up being a disaster, but Lenka was wonderfully patient and after some time, we were finally able to get E.J. back to sleep so she could do her thing.

Here are some of my favorite shots:

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I have to say, I make some pretty adorable babies.