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