I'm Real

Yesterday Mommy and Daddy picked up my birth certificate and came home to find my Social Security card in the mail.

They also received the EOB for my birth and are extremely grateful to have insurance. Otherwise, the hospital would have expected payment of $18,420 from them!

I say I'm worth it and they said 'thank you, Aetna!'.

The Amazingly Full Freezer and Tons of Purell

Grandma Burt visited us for the week and graciously did all of our grocery shopping, planned and cooked six weeks worth of meals for us. We will be feasting on meat loaf, lasagna, turkey, turkey soup, macaroni casserole, muffins and chocolate chip cookies. Thank you Grandma Burt!

Here Grandma Burt and I are in the middle of a staring contest.

Daddy took advantage of his MOM's (it's always all caps) visit to go back to work. Here's a picture of him after he got home one night, achieving true work-life balance.





We had lots of visitors this week, though one at a time and lots of Purell was used. We are so grateful to everyone for coming so far to visit us!


Wednesday Meave came to visit and kindly helped with the feedings.

On Thursday Lisa came and gave Mommy a break from holding me.

On Friday our neighbors, Estella and Baby Henry came to visit. I am so excited to have a friend so close by!

Saturday was such a special day- Kathleen and Mike drove really far to come spend the morning with me. No pictures were taken, so we will need to arrange for another visit really soon.

Mommy spent the rest of the week at my beck and call. I've been accused of being quite demanding when hungry or suffering from a dirty diaper. However, when I'm sleeping there is no waking this me. Mommy's tried to out stubborn me by stripping me down to a diaper and wiping me down with a cold washcloth, but she fails because I can sleep through it all! Then when I want to wake up Mommy and Daddy laugh at my long choreographed streching ritual complete with lots of grunting and moaning. They envision many long mornings before school trying to get me out of bed.

On Friday we went to a breastfeeding support group and were the only little girl, but with all my grunting the mommies of the boys were quite entertained with this little baby girl. We would have stayed the whole hour but Mommy screwed up and didn't remember a diaper bag and one was desperately needed. Thank goodness a Target was right down the street!

Saturday marked the falling off of the ugly umbilical cord stump. Yippee! We can now try out real baths!

Here is the happy family. At least two of us are awake in this photo!

Here is Super Baby sleeping.

Does She Like It?

Change of Pace.... From here on out, the posting is going to be from me. That's Samantha Madison Burt to you, thank you very much. I really feel I'm the best to tell you what really goes on in the Krempa-Burt family.

It's hard to believe that it's been just over a week. It seems like a long time in terms of sleep loss, yet has gone so quickly in the sense that I've totally taken over their lives.

Here is an action shot of me- the one they call "McSquirmer".

Daddy tried a new bouncer out on me and Mommy came into the room and asked if I liked it. His response? "Well, she's not crying." How simplistic life has become!

I went to the pediatrician today and weighed in at 7 pounds and 7. 5 ounces. Since my weight gain is perfect, they received clearance to stop waking me every 2-3 hours at night to feed. This is huge news for all of us.

I learned to hold my head up for a few seconds at a time and love to look around and see what is happening. I've also discovered my thumb though I prefer to nurse when bored. The unsympathetic doctor has since stopped this grazing and limited me to feeding every two hours.

Here are some photos of my first visitors, Mommy's parents, who spent Saturday night and Sunday with the one they now call "the little princess". Uncle Travis came up, but managed to escape from holding me and from being captured on camera.

Hi, Grandma!

Hi Grandpa!

Hi Everyone!

Welcome to Jeff and Vanessa's blog. We are starting our blog to make sure that we keep everyone updated on our lives since so few of you actually live in New Jersey. And of course, the only part of our lives that you actually care about is Little Samantha... so this blog will primarily be about her. It will also primarily be from Mom's perspective, since this is Jeff's first and most likely only post ever.

First, a recap of the hospital stay through pictures.

Our family 15 minutes after establishment. Holding her for the first time and she is already smiling!


Daddy spending time with Sam in the nursery because Mommy couldn't get out of bed. Look at that dark hair! Yes, he washed his hands first...


Vanessa and her self portrait twenty minutes after delivering Sam.


Vanessa holding Sam (finally!) Thursday afternoon.



Here is Sam with her first bunny. Note the really cute name tag the nurses made for our bundle of joy. She was one of the few to receive such a special honor in the nursery.


We brought Sam home today, Saturday, July 12th. This was her actual due date, but I think she is taking after her Mommy in personality but you can judge for yourself as you read the stories of her adventures. As you can see from the pictures below, Samantha is very cute. You also note that the only pictures that we have of her to date were taken in the hospital. That's because in the hospital, there is a whole staff of people there to make your life easy. They make your life easy because they want you to leave. They know that if they make things too difficult, you will start to understand that this whole child-rearing thing is not the fun and games that your wife described when convincing you that you are ready to have kids.

To illustrate, I transpose a section of the our detailed activity log for Samantha's first day home:

11:30 - Arrive home

11:32 - Dad goes to the store to get the stuff we didn't know we needed

12 - 12:20 - Ate

12:30 - 1 - Slept

1:30 - 2:30 - Slept while making little crying noises that were cute for the first 2 minutes and then made me wonder if she is dying.

2:30 - Vanessa goes to the neighbor's house to show pictures

2:31 - Sam has her first exploding poop incident (more detail here if you really want it, but you don't. Trust me.)

2:32 - 2:55 - Jeff deals with Sam's first exploding poop incident.

3:00 - She has finally settled down

3:01 - Mom comes back from nieghbor (nice timing Mom)

3:02 - 3:20 - We give Sam her first bath at home. She now hates us and will require years of therapy.



At this point, I look down the list, and there's a lot of eating and sleeping, as well as diapers. And we were up most of the night (by we, I mean Vanessa, because I played the role of 1950's husband last night and pretended to be asleep every time she cried. I am very good at this).



So that's the story for today. As you can see from the pictures, Samantha is probably the cutest baby ever. And she is already bringing joy into our lives, despite the exploding poop and Vanessa's lack of sleep. So enjoy the pictures, and stay tuned...



Jeff (writer) and Vanessa (approver)



Back to the beginning-

Here are the ultrasound pictures.