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.