As Our Forrest Grows

Hello Once Again! We are excited to announce that our second daughter, Ellianah Ruth, was born on Friday October 5th! I apologize now for any typoes / things I say that do not make sense… we are all doing well but are certainly becoming more tired as the days go on.

For those who are interested I will try to give a brief update on Ellianah’s birth, how Abionah is doing and finally the meaning of Elli’s name. Feel free to skip over any parts that do not interest you. Pictures are at the bottom.

Ellianah’s Birth and How We’re Doing

Ellianah was due on October 24^th. Her sister, Abionah, was born 5 weeks early, so it was our prayer all along that Elli would make it to at least 37 weeks. She was 37 weeks and 2 days when she was born!

The Lord has shown us much grace in regards to labor and delivery of both our girls. Labor began around 1:30 Friday morning. A friend of ours came over to watch Abi and we headed to the birth center (about a 40 minute drive). We arrived around 3:00am and Ellianah was born at 4:46am (6lbs 7 ½ oz; 19 inches long). By God’s grace there were no complications! We were able to share the morning napping together at the birth center and were home by 4:30pm the same day (one of the many blessings of using a birth center; no long hospital stay).

Jon and I are both tired but we are all doing well. Elli is still in the “sleepy stage”. She sleeps most of the time, but I’m sure this will pass quickly as she is already beginning to wake up and be more alert.

How Abi is Doing

Abionah seems to be transitioning quite well at this point (this too may change, however, when Elli becomes more alert and thus more demanding of time and attention… we shall see). So far Abi loves being around her little sister. She will run up to Elli and say her name and point to her different facial features. She enjoys holding Elli on her lap and will gently stroke her leg or play with her fingers while smiling and saying “baby”. It doesn’t take long for Abi to become bored with her though and run off to play with something else.

The hardest part for Abi as of now is that I am not allowed to pick up anything heavier than Elli, which obviously means I cannot pick up Abi. She doesn’t understand this and it’s made her sad several times. For the most part, however, she is fine with me just sitting on the floor with her instead of picking her up.

What’s in a Name

As you may remember from when Abionah was born, we have tried to be very intentional about naming our children. We desire to name our children in such a way that their names are reminders of what our Lord has done in our lives as a family. This has proven to be a very difficult task so we will see if it works with future children, but so far it has worked for both Abionah and Ellianah

The meaning of Ellianah Ruth:

Ellianah means “the Lord answers our prayers”

Ellianah’s safe arrival is certainly a huge answer to prayer. We did not make this information public until now, but we actually thought that we lost Elli two times before reaching 11 weeks of pregnancy. We were then told that the chance of losing her would be 50 / 50 until we reached the end of the first trimester. This was a challenging time for us. Each day that passed was a blessing as it meant we were one day closer to being past the first trimester. We were told that after the first trimester the chance of loss was only slightly higher than normal.

Most babies have a three vessel umbilical cord; Elli’s was only two vessel. This is actually fairly common and there are no major concerns except some babies with a two vessel cord do not grow as well and are quite small at the time of birth. We had several ultra sounds with Elli to track her growth and thankfully it was never an issue.

It does appear that Elli only has one kidney (as they could not find both during the ultra sounds) but again no one seems to be concerned about this as many people go through life with one kidney and only find out when they are much older. We will be meeting with her pediatrician on today (Tuesday) to see if he wants us to look into this further.

So, all this to say that much prayer went into this little one and thus we thought Ellianah was a very fitting name. (For those who are interested, it is a Hebrew name however we changed the spelling a little)

Ruth means “beloved companion”

We picked this name in the hope that Elli will become a beloved companion to Abionah (as well as any other siblings she may have) and ultimately to her spouse one day. We later found out that Ruth was my Grandmom’s middle name before she got married which made it even more special.

Thank you for rejoicing with us! We are certainly blessed!

Hello everyone! It feels like it's been FOREVER since our last update. Life has been crazy busy, but good. Here is a brief update.

- Jon finished his second year of teaching in North Carolina.

- We packed, cleaned and moved out of our house (Jon drove the U-Haul while Abi and I flew to Texas)

- We have unpacked (only the items we will need for the summer as we will be changing homes in the fall) and are getting settled with life here in Texas.

For those of you who do not know, we have accepted a position at a Torchbearers school. If you are not familiar with the organization feel free to check them out on-line at http://www.torchbearers.org/

Jon will be running a camp program during the summer months and teaching at the school during the year. We are very excited about this new season! Speaking of new seasons, for those who do not yet know, we are expecting our second little one at the end of October!

We do not currently have internet at our house (at least for the summer, possibly after that as well). In light of this we will probably not be posting very often, sorry.

Hope you enjoy the picture from the last few months!

March