Haley and Jolly Ol' St. Nick

Haley's first visit to Santa Claus. She's very excited. The photographer was using a cow bell to try to get the babies to smile. I don't think it was very effective. I think babies just thought the photographer was weird.

Halloween

Well, fall has arrived in New England and it's been a beautiful one so far - great weather and some fantastic foliage.

Fall's funnest holiday is, of course, Halloween and to begin the celebrations the Ross family headed to the pumpkin patch.



Can you spot Haley's head in the midst of all these pumpkins? (hehe)

To continue the Halloween festivities, Haley dressed up as a peapod this year. She's easy to spot in the picture below (amongst the other babies from our new mom's group) - she's the only one not wearing orange.

A sleepy peapod.

Then there was pumpkin carving and photo ops with the family later on Halloween evening (the evil cat Eddie was a no-show in the pictures - she wanted no part in our shenanigans) .



The resident ghost joined us for one pix (look closely in front of the pumpkins). At the same time, Chloe was starting to grow tired of the photo shoot.

Baby Expressions - Photo Shoot

Anne, our Auntie Nanny, took some great photos of Haley in a little photo shoot.
She was able to capture a few of the many different expressions that Haley shares with us...


Happy - laughing

Happy - chuckle

Concerned - why are you pointing that camera at me?

Happy - side splitting laughter



Very fun...

Oct 17 - a full day of fun

In these photos, we see Haley at the famous Head of the Charles regatta.



After the regatta, our pal Danielle Tudehope and her brother stopped by for dinner at the local sushi restaurant.

Visit to Dad's office

At less than a month old, Haley made her first appearance at Dan's office on Sept 18. Nezha, a big Haley-bug fan, is shown above with Dan and Haley...

SMILE!

Green ham and eggs...

Here, the green pig strikes again!

Below, we have Haley yipping and yapping about various things in her own private language.

More pictures-by popular demand

Grandpa and Cheryl Ross Visit

With significant determination, Dad (Kevin) and Cheryl Ross came out and whipped the place into shape. Cheryl cooked for us and prepared a number of great meals for later. Kevin spent a lot of time with our little peanut curled up on his chest (as seen in the photos above). And, every day when I came home from work, we seemed to have a new piece of childcare equipment. Now we have a swing/cradle, an infant tub, and even floormat/play area--all of which will likely show up on this blog at some point.

First week comes to a close

Yep, they are right... its pretty tiring doing this parenting thing.

Sorry about disappearing for a few days. We checked out of the hospital and came home, and have been wondering what happened ever since.

Here are a few of the photos from when we were leaving the hospital room where we lived for three days...

To be fair though, it has been great to have some family in town to help out. Melody (Kelly's mom) was here throughout the week. She left on Friday. Heather, Kelly's sister, came out on Saturday. Both have cooked meals, done laundry, and helped changed diapers, etc.

One other thing seems to have made a pretty big difference in helping us to maintain the illusion of being at least a little in control. It is a multivolume DVD that Melody got for us called D'unstan (so far we only have volume 1 but it is awesome). A lady from Australia with a knack for hearing things has deciphered the language that newborn infants use (consisting at first of ~5 words). Each of these are distinct and now that we know them, Haley pretty much tells us exactly what she needs (in some cases, she needs to burp, in others, she needs a diaper change, and, of course, most of the time she is saying that she is hungry). Here is a link to the DVD on http://www.dunstanbaby.com/.

For our first night home, I ordered a birthday cake from Baskin Robbins. It was yummy!

And since we hadn't been able to spend much time with the dog, we took Haley and Chloe out for a walk her first day back too. (Chloe's blog can be found at http://dkross.blogspot.com/)

One of the key skills when one has a new baby is swaddling.

In order to perfect the art, Kelly practiced on the stuffed sheep. :)

Then... perfection. :-)

Until next time... Haley, who is sitting on my lap while I write, says bye bye.

Day two: limited sanity returns

Hi All! Thanks for the many emails of congratulation. Last night was a 'long' night and Haley Ann demanded to be fed every hour throughout the day today so Kelly really hasn't been able to catch up. As for me, I can sleep anywhere, so when things slow down, I'm out--until I hear Kelly saying my name for what must be the 5th or 6th time (judging by the escalating tone)...then I am back in action.

In any case, we apologize that the first post had a mere 3 pictures. It has been hard to take pictures with both of us wondering what the heck to do just to tend to Haley. Today, I am adding some more photos from here at the hospital.







In this one (below), we see mom and grandma (mom's mom) Ross. Melody flew in a week or so ago to be here for us. It has been a challenge to build a wide support network since we only moved to Boston from San Diego in February of this year.


Of course, before heading to the hospital, we had plenty of time to assemble the baby's room at home (picture below). Thanks to all of you who made this task much easier through your generous gifts. I was encouraging Kelly to hold a baby shower in every city either one of us has lived... but we ended up just doing one in San Diego and one in Kansas. It turned out that was good because we already have too many clothes for the entire first year!


So, until one of us can stay awake long enough to post again... Ciao!

Haley joins the world!

After a good 13 hours of contractions, Haley Ann figured it was time to make an appearance. Requiring only 30 minutes of pushing by mom, she arrived at 2:10 a.m. EST on August 25, 2008.

Here are her stats:

• Weight: 7 pounds
• Length: 20 inches