Pictures at home

Grandma and Isaac brought Jacob and I home from the hospital Tuesday afternoon. Here we are in our first few moments at home, with me in the shirt I'd been wearing since the wee hours of Sunday morning:



There was a little drama the night before we were discharged because Jacob's bilirubin tested on the low side of him being jaundiced. They had to take a blood sample and send it to the hospital lab to get his exact bilirubin count, and then his pediatrician would make the decision about whether he should stay in the NICU for baby suntan therapy or if he would be sent home with a "bili-blanket" to treat his jaundice in a more comfortable setting. This all turned out to be a moot point because his blood test showed his bilirubin on the high side of normal and he passed his final inspection by the pediatrician with flying colors. Dr. Modi said his jaundice would get worse before it got better, and sure enough he looks a bit pumpkin-headed. This is what Jacob has to say about it all:



Isaac had fallen asleep on the ride home from the hospital, so Grandma got some unadulterated Jacob time. Here they are admiring each other:



We are already succumbing to the Second-Baby Photography Curse. For example: we have no good pictures of Dada and Jacob, including zero pictures of the two of them taken together at the hospital. Dada snapped a bunch of pictures right after Jacob was delivered and then left to pick up Isaac, taking my camera with him to distribute these pictures to the known universe. He never brought my camera back to the hospital, and Grandma forgot her camera in the car the two times she and Isaac visited us while we were there. I keep trying to encourage Daddy/Jacob-focused photography, but Dada has been working during the day, which means when we remember to take pictures it is way too dark in our living room to take cute portraits without them being blurry (like this one):


...or Dada is snacking and has not only Jacob but also crumbs on his shirt that we don't notice until we dump the picture onto the computer hours later:



We are also trying to capture the interactions of Big and Little Brothers O'Neal (more on that later), but because of the inherent limitations of photographing a moving toddler, we don't have too much to offer just yet. I will give you this one, featuring a popular living-room scenario where I have Jacob on my lap or attached to the boob and Isaac decides he needs to squeeze his big butt in the same chair, creating a massive snuggle-fest: