February 15

I'm sorry to say that it was not a great picture-taking day for me. Eli and I skipped church in the morning and small group in the evening and stayed in bed and nursed all day. I left the bed exactly twice: once to take him out for a photo shoot (more on that later) and once to go grocery shopping with Caleb. It was just what we needed.

This is what breastfeeding bootcamp looks like. Eli, me, and my Boppy, all in bed, with my hospital jug of water and breast pump parts in the background. Hopefully it's working, and hopefully tomorrow the craniosacral therapy will help Eli to start nursing on the right side so that I can ditch the pump.

Chris took the kids to church this morning, and to small group this evening. When they returned home from small group, all three kids came galloping into my room and clambered up into the bed. (Except for poor Lily, who isn't yet big enough to climb up into the big bed. She stood at the side of the bed and called, "Up? Up? Hulp? Up?"

When she finally got up, Lily was rewarded with snuggle time with her brother. Pardon the crummy cell phone photo, but I didn't dare leave  her unsupervised with Eli long enough to go grab my real camera.

And then I saw on Facebook that the photographer we visited this morning had already processed a picture of Eli! Are you ready?

Here it is: 

Yep, that is my baby, in a leprechaun hat, courtesy of Sweet Beginnings Photography.

Nope, I am definitely not the type of person who would pay a photographer to take a picture of my child in a leprechaun hat. So how did it happen?

Well, many of my friends volunteer for/support a teen maternity home called The Sparrow's Nest. One of my friends shared some info about a charity calendar benefiting The Sparrow's Nest; they were seeking baby models. Of course I signed up. My babies all are cute enough to be calendar models! When the photographer told me that my (still unborn at this point) baby had been chosen to be the March baby (you know, since he was due in March), I was thrilled! Then she told me that the look she was going for was "sleeping baby in a leprechaun hat". By then it was too late to back out, so I just rolled with it.  

I have to say, the end result is pretty funny. I noticed the photographer did take a shot or two of Eli without the hat, so I'm holding out hope we may get a more normal image out of the session. In the meantime, I'm still waiting to share the pictures Amber took of Eli last week - I just ordered birth announcements yesterday, and I'd like to wait until those are delivered before I share the pictures. We'll see if I actually posses that level of self control.