Matthew Jon Hager

After a fairly short labor and a delivery that lasted all of a few minutes we welcomed Matthew Jon Hager into the world on Monday, April 20, 2009 at 3:02pm! Only 1 day overdue! He was 7 lb. 14.2 ounces and 19.5 in. (exact length as Joshua and only a few ounces heavier than Joshua). These photos were taken during his first bath an hour after his birth. We hope to have more photos of our sweet, adorable and content little guy on the blog later today.

As for the labor and delivery - contractions started at 7am at 10 min apart. I had a lot of back pain and abdomen pain that accompanied all this. I called Cory and work at 7:30am and put him on notice that this may be the real deal, I didn't want to assume as we didn't experience things this way last time as Joshua was induced. By 8am they were consistent contractions that lasted 30-45 seconds and were 5 minutes apart. I called my OB's office to see if my doctor wanted me to go to the hospital. The nurse called back about 40 minutes later telling me to go to the hospital. I prepared Joshua and his things for a day with Uncle Shawn and Owen as well as prepared the rest of my things for the hospital. Joshua was off with Uncle Shawn by 10:30am as excited as could be! Cory was home by 10:15am, packed his things and put everything in the car. We were at the hospital by 11am which was good because the contractions were getting stronger and were now 3-4 minutes apart. I was put in a labor and delivery room and quickly situated. I was hooked up to a variety of machines (fetal heart monitor, etc), cervix checked and looked to be at 5 cm. and the doctor on call broke my water. Soon after the much anticipated anesthesiologist came in to put my epidural in. Life was good once this was in place and contractions weren't felt again! About an hour after all this my cervix was at 8cm. When the nurse checked again around 2:40pm I was complete and she got the room ready for delivery. She had me do a practice push at 2:55pm and the doctor was called to come for delivery. The nurse then had me push twice during one contraction and on then twice again on the second contraction - the top of baby's head could be seen. On the third contraction I was about to push when I got sick and started to vomit. Apparently as I was vomiting little Matthew flew out and the nurse caught him on the bed! She calmly asked Cory to hit the call button for an extra pair of hands to help her since she was the only one in the room! A couple other nurses and a resident came in to help with the umbilical cord and the delivery of the placenta. The doctor on call came in just a few minutes later. It was quite the enjoyable experience, especially compared to the last time! Immediately after he was born I got to snuggle skin to skin with Matthew for about 45 minutes and feed him (he kid was a champion at eating from that very first moment, again very different than last time around)! We are doing well and hope to be home Wednesday late morning or early afternoon adjusting from a family of 3 to a family of 4!

Blessed Easter!

This year Joshua has really come to realize just what Easter is all about. Thanks to hearing the stories at home and at church as well as acting them out at school Joshua has really gotten to know the Easter story very well. We even got out the Resurrection Eggs the other day and he was able to recall most of the parts of the story from symbols he found in the eggs! It's so exciting! Knowing Joshua had a better concept of what we were really celebrating on Easter made the other Easter stuff fun and exciting, but not the focus.
Saturday night we treated Joshua and Owen to an early Easter dessert of bunny cake (created by the bakers at Arnie's). This was something I remember having as an Easter treat as a child, so I like to carry on that tradition with my own family. Sunday was a day of real celebration as we started the day with an Easter egg hunt around the house. Joshua would find an egg which contained a picture clue that led him to another egg (very similar to the hunt we did with him for Valentine's day this year). He loved racing around finding the eggs and reading the clues! His final clue sent him to the laundry room where he found his Easter basket! He adored his new bigger sized bunny bear and his new Lego set as well as the other little treats his basket contained. Then it was off to church and out to lunch with Papa and Uncle Phil. Then it was over to Grandpa and Grandma Hagers to celebrate where he received another bag of Easter goodies and had a ball playing with all the cousins. It was a busy, but very fun day. We feel blessed to celebrate our risen Saviour!

Owen and Joshua with the bunny cake!



Finding an egg!

Daddy helps with the clues.

Joshua found his Easter basket!

Classic Eater picture.

Playing with his new Lego set.

Dyeing Easter Eggs

Our poor deprived child (yea right!) has never dyed Easter eggs! Not really sure why we've never done it, but perhaps it's because I don't eat hard-boiled eggs and didn't even know how to make one (until today that is)! Today we had nothing going on and thanks to Erin mentioning she was doing this with Owen today it jogged my memory of having bought a few dye kits on clearance last year. We had all necessary items on hand so we got to work dyeing and decorating! Joshua liked drawing on the eggs with the "magic crayon" and then dunking them in the colors. He enjoyed seeing what his creations looked like coming out of the dye too. After all the eggs dried he added a few stickers to some and we put them in a dish for decoration. I'm sure we'll be doing this again next year as it was an easy and fun activity!

Dunking the egg in the dye.

Drawing with the "magic crayon".

Decorating with stickers.

Visiting the Dinosaurs at the Museum

Since seeing the billboard on the highway every time we went to preschool Joshua has been asking if we could see the dinosaurs. I have been wanting to take him, but have been waiting as I thought it would be something fun to do as a family. There are Dinosaur Discovery Nights offered a few nights a month from 5-8pm. For the week of spring break they have Dinosaur Discovery Nights Monday - Friday from 5-9 pm! It's quite the deal - for $10 a person you get museum admission (reg. $8 for an adult), admission to the dinosaur exhibit (reg. $2), unlimited carousel rides, admission to a planetarium show (reg. $3) and a pizza meal! It's quite the money saving way to go! We went last night with Shawn, Erin and Owen. The exhibits weren't very busy at all, however the line for dinner was a bit of a wait. The dinosaur exhibit was a huge hit with Joshua and Owen! The robotic dinosaurs were cool to watch and there were lots of activities to keep the boys busy like puppets, digging for dinosaur bones, coloring, cutting, tracing and rubbings of dinosaurs, dinosaur puzzles, plastic dinosaurs to play with and magnetic bones to make a dinosaur. We spent quite a bit of time in the dinosaur exhibit, but also got to see the animals and the streets of GR exhibits. The boys also enjoyed a couple of carousel rides! The only planetarium show available was at 9pm. Amazingly the boys were wanting to see the show at 9pm and even though we as adults were bored Joshua and Owen both loved it. We had a great night together! Check out the video below to see a bit of our fun.

Click To Play

Happy Birthday Owen!

On Friday our nephew (Joshua's cousin) Owen turned 3 (I can't believe he is 3, but then again we have a soon to be 4 year old and I can't believe that either)! Owen had his big Lightning McQueen birthday bash with the whole family last night; talk about a full house there were 22 people there which included 9 kids under the age of 6! It was a fun time for all! The kids had a great time playing together, especially enjoying all of Owen's new toys. We also got to enjoy a cool cake that Erin made based on Owen's favorite seen from the movie "Cars". It was a fun evening and one I'm sure Owen will remember forever! Happy Birthday Owen!

Owen opens the workbench we gave him.

Owen opens his John Deere bike!

Joshua just had to try out Owen's cool new bike!

Balloon Painting!

In preparation for making our Easter cards to send to family and friends I introduced Joshua to balloon painting. It's simple, it's easy and it's not very messy! All you need is a balloon, some washable tempera paints, paper to paint on, a tray for the paint (styrofoam meat trays work well) and you will want something to cover your work surface (an old plastic table cloth works for this). I remember the kids in preschool absolutely loving this art activity so I thought I'd try it with Joshua. He loved it just as I suspected he would and painted for quite a while this way. For those of you who will receive an Easter card from us you will receive a piece of Joshua balloon painting art, but we can't show you the finished product yet as we don't want to spoil the surprise!

On Wednesday
afternoon our sidewalk was poured so Joshua got to see the cement truck in action once again. The cement contractor was going between putting our sidewalk in to a pouring a porch for a new house down the street so he was back and forth a few times that day. One of the times the contractor came back to work on smoothing out our sidewalk he brought Joshua a painter turtle that he had found walking in the middle of the road right by our house because he thought Joshua would like to see it. Joshua was thrilled! We've found plenty of toads and frogs throughout the years, but never a turtle. We kept the turtle in a bucket for a couple hours and then I put him in the laundry tub where he would have a bit more room to move around. We kept the turtle until Cory got home and Joshua was able to show him. Then we popped the turtle back in the bucket and took him over the lake (or what I call a pond) across the street to release him. We've seen so much wildlife in the 2 months we've lived here including geese, ducks, swans, wild turkeys, deer, hawks, rabbits, woodpeckers, etc. so we can now just add a turtle onto the list! I'm sure this won't be the last turtle we see as we now live in a more wooded area with wetlands, a pond and a creek all very close by!

Machine Mania!

So the last two days have been a little boy's dream come true in terms of all the machines Joshua has gotten to see, oh and ride on. Monday night the cement contractor came over with his Bobcat and leveled the area that we are building a shed on in preparation for the cement slab. Joshua was this guy's shadow all night long. Thankfully this contractor was very kind and didn't mind having a "helper". He even took Joshua for a ride in the Bobcat and Joshua got to scoop and dump the dirt!
This morning the cement contractor arranged for the cement truck to arrive early enough that Joshua got to see the cement be poured before we had to go to preschool. Joshua got to put his hand print in the cement and have his hand sprayed off by the hose from the cement truck, which he thought was pretty cool. Then the cement truck driver asked Joshua if he wanted a ride in the cement truck to which Joshua immediately and enthusiastically replied, "YES!" Joshua got to help drive the cement truck from our backyard all the way up to the front yard! Needless to say the child has been on a bit of a machine high between daddy's tractor, the Bobcat and the cement mixer! There is video of all his machine riding below.

A Boy's Toy!

Monday night Cory brought home something he has had his eye on for quite some time. Now with an acre lot to mow he had a good excuse to buy a tractor. I'm not sure who was more excited about this purchase, Cory or Joshua. Let's just say these guys are looking very forward to using this tractor this summer - uh once the lawn goes in and is actually needing mowing! Of course the boys had to take a ride on it that night just to test it out. Take a look at the video below!

Artistic Improvement!

Okay, so a few times on this blog I've said that Joshua has very little interest or talent in art. Well this last week the little stinker has been really into art kinds of things like coloring, cutting, drawing and gluing! Amazingly I've already seen improvement in his coloring and drawing within the last week! He is also writing his name more frequently and the letters are usually in the correct order instead scattered all over the page. Today he colored the frog picture to turn in for a prize at preschool registration tomorrow night. Then he proceeded to turn the paper over and draw a train and a flatbed truck on the back. I just love to see this kind of growth, especially in an area that I didn't think Joshua had any interest in!

Daddy's little helper

Saturday Cory built some shelves downstairs in what is going to be our storage room. Of course as soon as Joshua heard that daddy was going to be building he promptly found his Home Depot apron, his safety goggles and his own tools so he could help. He loved copying everything Cory did from the measuring and marking to the sawing and hammering. It was so cute to watch! Joshua's got a great start on learning those building skills!

Marking his measurement.


Gotta concentrate when sawing!

Sawing the wood takes lots of muscle!

Grandpa Bob (aka Bob the Builder) in Preschool

The preschool Joshua attends is unlike a lot of preschools in the area. The teachers do not form the curriculum, the children do. The children's needs and interests dictate much of the curriculum for the year (one the many reasons I love this program so much and invested 7 years of my life in growing it!). This year Joshua's preschool class is interested in building, specifically they want to learn how a house is built. They started their learning process by stating what they know and asking the questions they had. Then the teachers took them to the library to do "research" (find books about building). They have been reading the books and having conversations about what they want to build, what to include in the house they want to build and what they might need. Knowing that my father-in-law loves to build and has a talent for drawing up plans as well as enjoys working with young kids I asked if he would be interested in helping the kids build a house in their classroom. He happily agreed! So, today "Grandpa Bob/Bob the Builder" came to preschool to talk to the kids about their ideas for the play house. He also brought some of his tools along to show the kids. Since he works at Home Depot he brought along a kid-sized apron for each of the kids! The kids were glued to what Grandpa Bob was saying the whole time and were eager to ask questions and share their ideas. Can't wait to see this project get underway!

Creative mind at work!

Okay, so to most people this pile of stuff would look like junk, but to a child (and a former preschool teacher) this is treasure! Today my friend and once co-worker Lorna took Joshua and I to a little, hard-to-find place called Learning from Scratch. It's a small corner in a warehouse that has bins of recyclable materials (wood blocks, foam pieces, tubes, cardboard shapes, magnets, etc) that you can choose from and fill a plastic bag for $3.00. It was like Christmas for Joshua when I told he he could choose whatever he wanted! We filled to plastic bags up to the very top (thanks to Lorna's tip of putting the plastic bags in a sturdier bag to hold it upright) and collected quite the variety of goodies for Joshua to create with at home. When we got home Joshua gleefully dumped out all his loot and we sorted through and organized his materials. Then Joshua decided he wanted to create a flatbed from some of his new goods. So, I got out the glue gun and he placed things where he wanted with no help from me (besides me controlling the glue gun). He has been playing with his finished product ever since. This is a great way to get our not-so artsy kid into a little more art play! He loves the freedom to create whatever he wants!

The sorted and organized loot.

Putting the wheels on his flatbed truck.

Decorating his flatbed truck.

The butterflies are flying!

Today Bright Beginnings was offering discounts for moms and kids to Frederik Meijer Gardens so Joshua and I met some friends from church/MOPS there for a morning of fun. It was a bit on the crazy, busy, chaotic side but the kids had fun anyway! There were actually more butterflies there than I had thought there would be at this point in the exhibit so at least there were lots of little creatures to look at. Being that this was a Bright Beginnings event we figured there would be some fun kid activities offered, but unfortunately there weren't. However, Joshua was happy looking around at the spring plants and going back in to see the butterflies a few times. He really wanted to have one land on him, but that didn't happen. I'm sure we'll be back before the exhibit leaves so he'll have another chance to have his wish come true. The nice part about this year is that they handed out a little butterfly passport and Joshua really liked going around and trying to match the different kinds of butterflies. We had a great time this morning!

Transformers

Cory still has a few of his toys from childhood, one of them being transformers and as you may know they are now back out for this next generation of kids. Well Joshua found Cory's old Transformers the other day and has been playing with them, however he found a bunch of extra pieces along with 6 vehicles/robots that he wanted to know what were for. Cory told him that together the 6 vehicles and the pieces made one big robot. Tonight Cory found a picture on the internet of the large robot put together and figured out how to create it for Joshua.

Creating

I've been going through some of Joshua's old baby clothes and other items the last few weeks. I was surprised to see I kept his old burp cloths, because they probably would have been better off in the trash after all the use and abuse they took during his first year of life! For this next baby I did purchase a set of burp cloths made out of Amy Butler fabrics from a lady whose items I saw at a craft sale (she also has an Etsy shop) but a few don't really cut it. So today I searched a few stores for some ribbon and bought some cloth diapers (a package of 6 that actually had 7 in it - BONUS!) and created some new burp cloths to use with this little guy. It only took me a couple hours and it only cost about $2.50 a burp cloth in the end. Now at least we have something new to use with the little guy and we won't have to use the old raggedy ones!

The finished products all lined up for a better view of the cute ribbon.

Another view of the 7 cute new burp cloths for about $18!

Ouite the Opportunity!

The trains that run behind our house periodically stop in our neighborhood from time to time. We have no idea why they stop and there is never a set time they stop for. Last Saturday a train was stopped on the tracks by our neighborhood for 12 hours. I figured that one day, when the weather turned a little nicer I would take Joshua to see the train a little closer (not like it's not close enough in our yard as it is, but I knew it would be a thrill for a little boy). Well today we saw the typical Friday afternoon train come through as we stood out on our deck. Joshua waved and the engineer opened his window and waved as well as tooted his horn for him. Joshua was tickled to say the least! Then we watched as the train came to a stop as it sometimes does at the cross street by our development. With the weather being so beautiful today I figured we could for a walk down the street and take a closer look. I grabbed my camera and told Joshua I would take his picture by the train. Once we got close to the edge of the tracks by the first of the two engines we stopped to look at the massive size of the train - Joshua was amazed! As we stood there just looking the engineer came out of the engine and came over to us he asked Joshua if he wanted to go in the train engine! Joshua of course said yes and immediately began walking over to the engine (which is very high off the ground). Thankfully the engineer helped him up the steps of the engine as I tried to get myself up. We got to go inside the engine and Joshua got to sit in the engineer's seat. The engineers (there were two other guys in the train besides the engineer that had greeted us) showed Joshua the gears and levers they pull to make the train go and they let him blow the train whistle and bell and turn the bell off! Joshua was just in awe! Let me tell you those are some close quarters those men ride in for up to 12 hours at a time. These guys were the same engineers who happened to haul the Barnum and Bailey circus train into downtown GR last September. By chance that evening we were visiting the house to see the building progress and saw that train come through. They told me it actually carried all of the equipment, all of the circus crew and some of the circus animals.
After a few minutes in the train we had to get out as it was time for this crew to head out (their 12 hour shift was done) and be picked up by a taxi and another crew to come and take over driving the train. Apparently they "tie down" the train quite often in our neighborhood so they can trade crews. We were able to snap a few pictures, none with the engineers as we really weren't supposed to be on the train (I'm sure for legal and safety purposes). Even though we weren't supposed to be on the train the engineers said they knew it would make Joshua's day and wanted to do that for him. What an once in a lifetime experience that was for Joshua!

Looking at the massive engine!

Pretending to drive the train (his hand is actually on the throttle).



Pulling the lever that sounds the horn and the bell!