So, yeah, we had a baby girl this morning...

Yesterday Mary had a check-up and she had dialated to a 5 since her last appointment, which signaled to us that we were pretty ready to have this baby. Though with Nathan, Mary was dialated to a 6 for a few days before we broke her water and that put her into active labor. So I went and taught my last lecture for the class I'm teaching on Monday night and got home around 10 pm last night. We stayed up chatting and making sure we were on the same page for plans and all. We had planned on going in on Wed morning to have her water broken if nothing happened before then. We went to bed around 11:15 pm last night. At 3:29 AM this morning, Mary woke me up and said "Jeff, get up, we need to go". I called our pre-arranged friend and she came over to our house. I still am not sure what time we got to the hospital... it couldn't have been too much before 3:45 AM... and Jane Azreal Hamm was born at 4:02 AM... so yeah, it went pretty quick! They didn't even have time for her to do anything before she was on that bed and ready to go. As is the typical fashion, Mary performed better than I did and I think I was pretty close to fainting and had to stay seated... it all came pretty quick. Jane weighs 7 lbs 5 oz and measured at 20 inches in length. And, yeah, it is 6:15 AM and I'm home so that our friend didn't have to wake Sarah and Nathan up to take them home so her hubby can go to work. We'll let the kids get a little more sleep and then I'll do breakfast with them and take them back over to our friends. I left right after they did their first feeding and Jane seemed to have a pretty good appetite! She was sucking on her hands, thumbs, fingers right after she came out, it was pretty cute. She seems healthy and seems a little smaller than Nathan and Sarah was. Mary, of course, did an amazing job and seemed very in control and was able to be patient with the nurses when they were wanting to do the typical mandatory things when she knew there wasn't time for that. Anyway, I left the camera at the hospital, so I don't have any pics to post, but I thought I would let everyone know... and come on! My wife just had a baby like 2.5 hours ago... I'll try to get the pics posted in the next day or so.
Oh, and her name is Jane Abigail Hamm... I didn't give her a middle name after Gargamel's cat from the smurf's, don't worry!

Can I just say that Mary is amazing... like with everything! There were three main goals with regards to the timing of the baby, some obviously more important than others. First, we wanted this to happen after my last lecture class (which happened last night, I just need to administer a final next Monday), second- we thought it would be nice if it happened a day or two before my mom gets here (she comes on Thurs afternoon), and third- just for funsies, we thought it would be fun for us to have Jane on a birthday in the 20's. My birthday is on the 21st, Mary's on the 22nd, Nathan's on the 25th and Sarah's on the 26th, and now Jane's on the 29th... not that big of a deal obviously, but kind of cool. Oh yeah, and we wanted to make it to the hospital, and we did... barely! Nathan just woke up... he takes after his dad... up with the sun!

Baby Jane pics

So, if you haven't read the story of the delivery, see below. But here are some of the pictures from the day.

This is my favorite solo pic of her so far, with her eyes open and everything. It's amazing to look into a newborns eyes!

This is a picture of Jane a little bit later this afternoon... sleeping peacefully. Adorable!
"Just want everyone to know that I'm here and my lungs are fully developed... and I don't like it when you take me out of a warm, squishy place. "

Jane's got a lot of dry/dead skin on her forehead and has already scratched herself with her fingernails on her face a couple of times.
Jane loves to suck on her hands and I loved how she does the "I love you" finger-sucking by sucking on her two inside fingers. Here's a first pic of me with our new daughter!
Here's a first pic of the proud Mommy with her little healthy baby Jane, shortly after delivery.
Here is Jane being cozy and somewhat content under the warming lights they had, with hands going all over the place!

A Visit from Big Sister and Big Brother!

Again, if you haven't seen the blog today (4/29) then start a couple of posts down and work up for the sequential stories and pics!

So, Sarah and Nathan came over to visit their new baby sister around 2:30 this afternoon. Nathan was pretty uninterested in the whole situation, which is not surprising for a kid who got up about an hour earlier than normal, had not had a nap and had been playing voraciously at friend's homes since about 8 am. So, below are the best pics we could conjure up with him and Jane in the same picture. It'll be an adjustment, but fortunately he and Sarah are great pals and if he picks up on how his big sis adores his new li'l sis, he should be fine.

When we asked him if he wanted to hold, hug, or kiss baby Jane, he would just say "NO!" and tried to avoid pictures on several occasions... we were able to get these two with him smiling in close proximity to Jane... it's a miracle!

Sarah, on the other hand, was absolutely ecstatic! She would hold Jane for a while and then want a break and then a couple minutes later she would want to hold her again. She did a phenomenal job holding and supporting her newborn-noodle-neck. She would rock back and forth while holding her and sang "Away in a Manger" to her. She is so excited for Jane to come home and to sleep in the same room with her... though we'll see how that goes. There couldn't be a more excited Big Sis right now. Below are a number of good pics of Sarah holding her sister Jane. Also, so I don't have to blog about it later. Sarah got a new haircut and she sure looks cute in it! The pics we have here are just as good as the ones that we tried to take of her haircut the other day, so here you go.


Jane is so cute with her eyes open, Sarah was pretty excited when she got to see her eyes open!
So sweet! Such a proud and happy Big Sister!

Sarah's Routine Board

So Mary had this idea a while ago to make a chore board, which we decided to call "Sarah's Routine Board" so that she doesn't view these things as chores. They consist of morning and evening routines that Sarah does and she's really excited about it right now. There are five things for each time. Her morning routine (pictured below, with the evening ones on the back) consists of making her bed, eating breakfast, getting dressed, brushing teeth, and doing her hair. Her evening routine consists of cleaning up any messes she made, reading the Book of Mormon, putting on jammies, brushing her teeth, and picking out her clothes for the next day. She's been doing this for a few days now and it has been with great anticipation that she does it each night and morning. Tonight while we were eating dinner she said, with great excitement "after dinner, in a little bit, I get to do my routine board!" As Sarah shows her excitement its had a good effect on Nathan as he gets more geared up for bedtime and is more involved in clean-up and everthing, which is a nice side-effect. Part of our long-standing nightly routine is to scratch her back while we read her Book of Mormon to her. It was funny cuz tonight I told her it would be easier for me to scratch her back if she was wearing jammies because her dress made it somewhat difficult. She was emphatic that she hadn't gotten to that point in her routine yet and that even though the back-scratching wouldn't be as successful, she wasn't going to go out of order. Pretty cute! Hopefully her excitement lasts, but we'll enjoy it for as long as it does.



So this is how it would look before Sarah started it in the evening. She would flip over the first one to see what the first thing she needs to do for the evening is and then put it on the nail below. As she completes each one she flips the next card with a picture of what she needs to do next. She really loves this thing and it was a great idea by Mary! Good job Sarah!

Baby Shower

So, one of our friends offered to throw Mary a shower a while ago. It was held last week, on 4/12, at the Angerbauer's house here in the area. It sounds like there was a good showing and that everybody had a good time. Mary was feeling very ill at the time, but I think that it was good to get out and be social for a bit. Of course, people were very generous with some cute and fun things that Jane will look very adorable in for sure. A lot of people went in on a group gift: a new baby swing/cradle, it's the "Starlight Papasan Cradle Swing". This was something that we really wanted as it plugs in (why do they make so many of these battery-operated?) and can swing side-to-side or front-to-back. It will be very nice to have and thanks to all who contributed to this gift and other personal gifts. Below are some pictures.

The fun thing about this shower is that Sarah went. She had so much fun and, I think, felt very special being able to go to an all-adult party for her sister with her Mom. She had lot's of stories to share and was very excited to show me all of the things that baby Jane got and how cute she would look in this and that, etc. She was a proud big Sis.
Big surprise... Sarah was designated the present-opener for the event.
Lindsey (and her husband, Mark) goes all out on everything and is an amazing hostess... she even had her party and invitations (home-made) coordinate with the colors of Jane's room! She is a great friend and Sarah and Nathan really enjoy playing with her. And we enjoy getting together and playing board-games with them. She made some amazing brunch dishes that I got to enjoy later for lunch. Thanks so much for hosting Lindsey! Mary had a great time and I heard your hosting abilities were even more amplified then we had known.

Trip to the Park

So Mary is now about 8.75 months pregnant and has been pretty sick for the last 3 weeks or so. She has not felt like doing much besides resting. So when I got home from work on Friday, I decided to get the kids out of the house and take them to the park for a while. They had a fun time and the weather was nice enough to enjoy the trip. We were there for about an hour so they were both pretty tired by the time we got home! Here are some pics:

Nathan is a slide-kamikazi. He's still in that in-between stage where he can go up some steps but it's much quicker if he crawls. So since he's already crawling toward the slide he just keeps right on going, with not concern about what lies ahead. He has gone off the bottom a few times and had to put on the hand brakes to prevent it at other times. I love watching him do this! There is no interruption between the approach and the actual sliding, it is one fluid motion.

Sarah's new "swing" method, which she's pretty proud of and seems to enjoy. It's okay as long as Nathan doesn't try it.

Nathan hasn't liked the swings in the past as much. He'll do it for a few minutes because Sarah loves it and then he seems uncomfortable and wants to go back to the playground area. This time, however, he loved it! He loved being pushed by me and having me pop out on either side of him to say "boo" or "hi Nathan" or something random. He was cracking up the whole time. There's still very little control of the swing but he's really having a blast here!

8 AM Church?

No, I'm not kidding. Due to some growth (Yay!) in Mountain Home, particularly our congregation, we have had to move our church time from 9 AM to 8 AM to accomodate some space issues and make room for the other congregations that meet after us. Today was our first go at it and we did better than expected. I got up at 6:15 AM, showered, got somewhat dressed, woke-up Mary and then started making pancakes (A Sunday AM tradition, one of the things we can count on them wolfing down, thanks to the syrup) for Sarah and Nathan and then woke them up at about 6:50. They commenced eating while I kept cooking, cooling, cutting and coating (w/ syrup) the pancakes for the ravenous kids. We had prepped all of our stuff the night before and showered the kids on Saturday as well. We had set out the kids church clothes the night before, so we got them dressed quickly after they ate breakfast. We were out the door at about 7:45 and were at church 10 mins early! Not bad! We'll see how long that lasts... probably a one or two hit wonder depending on when little Jane arrives. The kids have definitely been a little more tired this morning, though we only woke them up about 30-45 mins earlier than normal. I feel sorry for the members of our congregation that live about 90 mins away up in the hills! They were there though!

More Garden Prep

So last week I finally finished removing all of the grass out of our designated garden area. It was a lot of good, hard work. The next night we rented a rototiller with some friends of ours for a day. They used it first and whirred through their garden areas and some other areas in their yard. They then brought it over and I did some work on it that evening and then finished it up the next morning. It was one of the bigger rototiller's that they had but it was fun to operate and see it churn up our soil. The dirt seems pretty good and it was not very rocky, which was nice.

Mary knows how much I enjoy blogging...

I was trying to find the pictures for some of these posts and discovered that Mary had created a new folder in our "My Pictures" area titled "For Jeff to Blog". I thought it was pretty funny.

Ode to my cool hair days

Seriously, I've had some cool hair in my days... now, not so much (hair or coolness)! Below are a couple of old pictures of my cool hair days, in addition to my blog profile pic. The first is of me and Odie in bed cuddling for a picture. This 'do was pretty cool because it was obviously long, curly, and luscious on top and completely shaved on the sides and around the back. I promise this wasn't a mullet... to my knowledge I never had one, but this ones pretty rad!


I think this above pic (taken at McCall while playing baseball at the family reunion) is when my hair was it's longest... to about my bottom lip. I think that Mary would let me grow it this long if it was still this curly and I didn't have the balding situation goin' on. I think there are some other pics floating somewhere in the memoirs of this good hair era for me, but I don't have any digital copies of them. This was probably in my hair (and tan) prime! This was some way cool hair!

This is a cool 'do as well and a total cute pic, if I do say so myself. Does anyone see resemblances between this pic of me and Nathan? I drew this picture of my earlier self in H.S. and gave it to my folks for some holiday or something and they still have it in their room, which makes me feel special... even if it wasn't a very good rendition of the pic. Anyway, I think this is cool hair, and even cooler cuz it's back in style nowadays... I'd love to grow Nathan's hair to this length but I'm sure it was unruly!

Conference with Kids

So this weekend (3 - 2 hour sessions yesterday, 2 - 2 hour sessions today) is our General Conference for our church. This really is amazing as these sessions are broadcast to over 90 countries and simultaneously translated into over 60 languages. You can watch it on TV in some places (or if you have Dish) or watch or listen to it via the computer or at a local church building via satellite communication. It is broadcast in over 90 countries with many millions of members watching it in their respective locations. It's quite remarkable! Anyway, what a blessing it is that we can watch it from the comfort of our own homes as we wouldn't be able to manage it very well without kids because we (and they) wouldn't be able to endure that many hours at the actual church building. We have a couple of family traditions that we're trying to instill with conference. The first one is that we have a lesson in our weekly Family Night the week before conference where we talk about one of our church leaders. This week we talked about President Dieter Uchtdorf and Sarah has enjoyed looking forward to hearing him speak. One thing that's nice about Conference weekend is you just get to relax and listen to wonderful messages from inspired followers of Christ. We kind of just block the weekend out as much as possible and enjoy time together while being spiritually fed.

Another tradition is to make lot's of popcorn to eat as a family. The kids love popcorn so as soon as I got the popcorn maker out they were ecstatic! Below are some pics of the kids getting excited as the popcorn pours into the big bowl. I also make breakfast on Sunday, Sarah requested eggs & toast and enjoyed having it for breakfast this morning.

Here is a pic of Sarah enjoying the Saturday afternoon session. I got her to sleep by cuddling with her on the futon and then was able to wriggle out and let her get a 30 minute nap in during conference. She was pretty cranky when she woke up though!
I think that Mary said "Amen" after the closing prayer of the Saturday afternoon session of conference... but I'm not quite sure. Here's how she spent the next 90 minutes after the Saturday afternoon session. I don't think she knew that I got to take this pic, so we'll see how long it's up here.

Cookin' with Daddy...

So the other day Nathan was really interested in what we were cooking and wanted to help me with it. I think part of his excitement stemmed from the anticipation of having rice for dinner, which he totally loves (rice with a decent amount of butter and salt... a boy after my brother Jordan's middle and high school days heart). Anyway, he ran and got a stool and set it right next to the stove. He enjoyed stirring the veggies around, even though he was saying "hot" the whole time. Pretty cute kid, hopefully we can continue to cultivate this. The meal, BTW, was delicious. I absolutely love Peanut Sauce and this was just veggies (squash, zuch, green pepper, onion, carrot, and broccoli) with peanut sauce on top of rice, what could be better?!

Garden Beginning...

As fairly new homeowners experiencing our first spring in the area and in our new home we're plenty ambitious... no it hasn't warn off yet... completely. So, we've decided to start a garden in our little backyard. Thankfully, unlike many new builds around here, our soil seems like it's pretty good and not too rocky. We still need to pull the grass section out but the other day we pulled out the weedy area and the soil looks pretty nice (like I would know!). The garden will be about 18 x 18 feet, a decent chunk of our back yard, but it'll be nice to have some fresh, cheaper, home-grown veggies. We're planning on planting cucumber, tomatoes, zuchini, squash, carrots (maybe) and I think Mary wants to do some strawberries. Once we remove the grass we're planning on renting a rototiller next week to churn up the soil before planting. We'll probably be planting about the time Jane is born, so we'll see how that goes. We're optimistic about the results but we'll see if the daily effort ends up being worth it. I'm sure the kids will be excited about watching it grow and will be anxious to help in the watering process! Below are some pics of our work. Oh and Sarah wanted me to mention that our neighbor's dog's name is Chico.

Just checking the mail Mom...

So when I got home Sarah mentioned something to me about how she had checked the mail earlier in the day and that there wasn't anything in there, which I didn't think anything of. A little while later Mary is explaining to me that she tried to take a nap while Nathan was also napping. After Nathan's nap Sarah and him were doing a great job cleaning up and Sarah was smart enough to use the stool to put some of the toys away on a higher shelf. Mary commented to Sarah that she was smart to use the stool and do it by herself. To which Sarah replied that she had decided to take the stool outside and check the mail while Mary was napping... AAAH..... WHAT? It's okay because Sarah reassured Mary that there weren't any cars and it was safe outside. Needless to say she was reminded that she needs to stay inside and never go outside without Mommy or Daddy's permission. Just tryin' to help I guess!

That reminds me... I don't think I ever told this story on the blog. Last summer after we had gotten the kids to bed Mary and I were sitting in the computer/toy room reading when we both thought that we had heard a noise like the door opening. I checked the doors and it seemed that everything was secure. About an hour later we get a knock at our door and a neighbor asks us if we knew that Sarah was outside, to which we puzzingly replied "No" as Sarah slipped back into the house through the back door and cruised down the hallway into her room and bed. The neighbor explained that when she got home from work Sarah was sitting on her porch chairs with her cat and that another neighbor had informed her that she had been walking between our two neighbor houses and along the sidewalk and that one person had stopped their car and asked her where she lived! Crazy! Of course, she was as innocent as could be and didn't see any problem with the late-night wanderings. What could we say other than we didn't want her to do that anymore. It was scary for us to consider the possibilities of what could have happened, but what can you say to a 4-year-old about that that they would understand... looks like we need alarms on our doors already! She's a fun one alright!