our first week

Since AJ was off all last week, we were getting pretty spoiled having him around all the time.

But now we are back to reality and back in to our daily routine.

We have all adjusted well and the older ones have been nothing but helpful. There is always an extra set of hands when it comes to burping, changing diapers, or putting her to bed. If I let them, they would just sit and hold her all day long.

The kids got used to having daddy around 24-7 and were able to get outside no matter the weather.

This little one didn't get out in the snow but that didn't keep her from wearing boots around all day.

Selah is a very laid back and content baby. I know she is still in the "sleepy" stage so things could change, but so far she has been easy.

Evangeline seems so big now. She has taken the role of big sister very seriously and wants to help with everything.

Forget playing with baby dolls, she now has her own baby to tend to.

Since we have been cooped up for several weeks now, trying to stay away from any sickness, Ari has had an usual amount of energy. It was nice to have daddy around last week to wrestle and play, but now we are finding our own ways to get that energy out...even if it means being "Super Ari" all day and jumping off the couch.

I was so glad to make it to my friends baby shower on Saturday. She is due April Fool's which happens to be her birthday!

Even though we just had snow the weather got pretty nice over the weekend. The wind still made it chilly but we were glad to get out and run around for a bit.

We are really looking forward to the spring!

hall-elujah!

I never thought I'd have a very interesting birth story to tell...but here I am thinking back to a few days ago and just laughing at the circumstances that unfolded.

I was due Thursday Feb. 28th and had woken up early that morning to contractions. My Dr. appointment was later that morning and I was only dilated to a 1. The contractions stayed consistent all day every 15 minutes and by the evening they were 5 to 8 minutes apart for several hours, nothing strong just consistent. We decided to go ahead and go to sleep, anticipating that we would be getting up in the middle of the night to have a baby.

They slowed down considerably and woke up Friday morning very disappointed that we hadn't had a baby. I still had some but they ranged from 10 to 40 minutes apart most of the day so we decided to go ahead with life and go to the Chris Tomlin concert downtown that evening. (We were not about to miss this concert unless we were going to have a baby!) About 9:15 they started to get strong and I had to stop and focus in order to get through them. We decided to go ahead and leave the concert even though they were only 8 to 15 minutes apart, but seeing that we had a few blocks to walk to get to the car we figured we should leave just in case they got any stronger. As we walked they were instantly 4 minutes apart and I felt low pressure so I decided to call the midwife and see if she thought it was necessary to come in yet.

She said things could progress quickly and suggested we come there to check things out. They sent me to triage at 10:00 pm to monitor baby and I was so disappointed when they said I was only dilated to a 4.5. My fear of coming to the hospital too early seemed to be coming true.  After monitoring the baby for a while and getting me registered they set me loose to walk the halls while they got my room ready.

By then my mom, sister, and sister-in-law arrived and walked the halls with us. I'm not sure what time we started walking but each lap brought stronger contractions that I had to stop and lean against the wall. I was getting frustrated that I didn't have a room. When my nurse came to check on me I asked her when I could get a room because I was getting tired of walking and just wanted to be able to sit down. She came back and said it would be another 40 minutes! (Apparently housekeeping was in the process of cleaning the only room with a labor tub-which the nurse who checked me in thought would be good for natural delivery.  She just never asked if that was a preference for me or if I just wanted a regular room.) That conversation with her is a blur so I don’t remember exactly how we figured out what was going on, but she got the gist that I just wanted a room, ANY room.

The nurse left and things seemed to happen all at once. I didn't have an ounce of energy left and asked for AJ to hold me up as I needed to sit down.  I saw a chair out of the corner of my eye and AJ helped me get there. (While I had sat there a man entered the room right next to the chair and AJ joked with him that we'd keep the noise down.) I sat there about 5 minutes leaning on him while he fed me ice chips and upon the next contraction I felt the need to push. I told AJ and my sister and sister-in-law set out to tell a nurse. I pushed on the next contraction and my water broke. The nurses arrived with a wheel chair in order to get me to a room and after I got in the chair the head was already crowning. My midwife had also showed up and after the nurses attempted to push the chair down the hall (and failed after running in to things in the way and part of the chair falling off!) my midwife saw that we weren't going to make it any further. As the midwife struggled to put her gloves on fast enough I pushed once and the head came out, pushed again and the rest of her came out!

From the time I felt the need to push to her being born was only a matter of minutes. People were scrambling for the time and my sister found it first and recorded her time at 12:23 am. It all happened so fast we were in shock as to what just happened. I had a baby in the hallway! After she came out I was instantly a new person. I just felt relieved and so ecstatic that she was here. I never really processed that I was having the baby in the hallway and when I felt her on my chest all I could say was “Praise the Lord!” over and over. They wheeled me to the room and finished everything else up there.

The rest of the night and even the next day we just laughed out loud that I had just birthed a child in the hallway in a wheelchair…which was a first for the hospital and the nursing staff and even the midwife.

Since this all happened unexpectantly, pictures of her birth are few and far between. AJ asked if there were video cameras in the hallway but there weren’t in that location. :)

We are in awe of all the answered prayers we had. From the day we found out we were pregnant, we had been praying for a quick, easy, and painless childbirth. Evangeline’s birth was so ideal we couldn’t imagine it getting any better than that. But God has a sense of humor and never fails to surprise us. Our prayers had definitely come true and holding our healthy baby for the first time in that hallway will always be a favorite memory of praising God for an overwhelming amount of blessings.

(We had to get a picture of the hallway. There's the chair where my water broke. The nurses said there really wasn't that big of a mess to clean up. I actually delivered over the carpet area just a few steps away.)

Selah Rhea Hillebrand

PRAISE THE LORD!!!!!

Selah Rhea Hillebrand 

Born: March 2, 2013 - 12:23 am

7 lbs 8.5 oz

19 3/4 inches

Angel and Selah are both doing very well!

The Lord Almighty hears our prayers and has certainly answered ours beyond our wildest dreams!

Lord we thank you for this blessing!  Please pray with us that we may raise this beautiful blessing of a daughter unto godliness!

This last 24 hours was truly exciting and we'll look forward to sharing this amazing story with you soon!

still waiting

The car seat has been a big hit with these two.

Ari kept reassuring me that he was so comfy he would just take his nap in there.

Life gets more exciting when daddy is home. As you can see I was not going to volunteer to get inside the tunnel.

It's been a while since we had the paint out. This was Evangeline's first time painting and I think they both preferred using their hands instead of the brushes.

It's always fun to spend time with cousin Owen, or as Evangeline says "O-wo".

Her pacifier is going to be the end of me. I'm sure of it. She is only allowed to have it in bed for nap or nighttime so she likes to "pretend sleep" all over the house in hopes to get away with it elsewhere.

Can you guess what he built here? 

He definitely has his moments where he likes to push her buttons, but for the most part he is a sweet big brother. I could hear him in the other room asking Evangeline if she wanted to be rocked. I wasn't sure this was going to end well so when I went to take a peak they were happily rocking away.

This girl means business when she says she is ready to nap. Throughout the mornings she will constantly tell me "night" and want to be put down for a nap. I end up putting her down several times and she usually comes out after about 10 minutes. Even though she doesn't normally fall asleep she comes out much more pleasant. Yesterday she didn't even bother asking me to put her down. Around 11 I noticed she had been gone for a bit and when I found her she was passed out on our bedroom floor. She napped there for almost two hours.

God has answered so many prayers for us this past week. We have pretty much been quarantined these past seven days since our house got plagued with sickness. Even though having sick people for a week straight can be exhausting at times, I am so blessed that it wasn't anything worse and that we have (mostly) recovered...and that I didn't go in to labor while being sick or having sick little ones to take care of. It's the worst feeling to have sick kids and not be able to comfort them. During all the sickness, we also had a (what seemed to be) major water leak that was coming through our ceiling fan in the living room. It ended up being a loose bolt on a toilet and no major plumbing repairs needed! Praise God!

while we wait

Life has been going on like normal while we wait for baby to arrive. My kids still enjoy Wednesdays with their cousins.

Ari has taken on the roll as "coach". He spent lots of time running around and showing Elias how to play football.

Ari still continues to be a ham. He wants his picture taken, but then proceeds to make the silliest faces. It's hard to get him to be serious. (I think I took about 5 above before getting that one.) But I suppose those pictures capture his personality the most. He's excited for Selah to be here soon. He is constantly asking if certain things "hurt" Selah. When I was working on our tile floor, I was scrubbing it with a toothbrush and he asked if it hurt my belly to sit like that. I just laughed because I'm sure I looked extremely uncomfortable. He will give her hugs and tell her he loves her.

I'm always finding Evangeline with something on her head. The "hat" above is a knitted sleep sack for the baby. The one below is a t-shirt for a Build-A-Bear. She doesn't necessarily think she's being silly either, she will just randomly wear different things on her head as if they were supposed to be there all along.

Her favorite time of day is when daddy gets home and they get to play on our bed. She loves to balance and walk up and down the edge (with assistance of course).

We still have two weeks until I'm due. An ultrasound from two weeks ago showed that she was about 6 lbs 12 oz already, so I'm not concerned about her being too small. My other kids were 8 lbs and 8 lbs 5 oz. so it will be interesting to see if she will be any bigger. I haven't had any contractions but she is extremely wild in there so I am always concerned that she is turning. The ultrasound showed her head down, but none of her movements are in the same place and neither are her hiccups. Some days I have fake contractions all the time and other days I don't have any. She seems pretty high right now so I'm not anticipating anything happening this week. Of course we are looking forward to her being here the most, but as far as not being pregnant anymore...I think I am most excited about not waking up at night to a full bladder every few hours. I also feel like I move as slow as a slug, it will be nice to be mobile again!

 

some statistics {Kisses from Katie}

It's no secret that AJ and I are open to moving across the world, completely changing our lifestyle and giving up the luxuries here in the US.  God had been working on our hearts long before he went to Uganda last year, and after that experience we were sure that our future would take us somewhere outside the US. At that point we knew we were willing to go. The question left to answer is when? Alongside that we have been trying to figure out when to adopt. We don't need to know all the details on how it will work, but again we were willing, able bodies to open our home and love another child like our own. We might not have all the logistics figured out yet, but we do know that we have love and we want to share that with other children who might not ever feel that.  Our hearts break for children who don't have parents to kiss their boo-boos, or tuck them in at night, but most importantly share the love of God with them. God the Father longs to show us His love. How can children understand the love He has for them if they don't have any tangible love on earth to help comprehend that? There is no doubt that AJ and I both are passionate about families and children.

I randomly came across this blog/book/ministry on the internet. Katie Davis just happens to be from the US and who happens to live in Uganda now (the same town AJ visited), and has a heart for loving children. I ordered her book KISSES from KATIE, and if I wasn't already convicted about loving on some kids...oh my. I haven't even finished the book but I wanted to quote a section from her diary she wrote on May 7, 2008 that she included in her book.

The truth is that the 143 million orphaned children and the 11 million who starve to death or die from preventable diseases and the 8.5 million who work as child slaves, prostitutes, or under other horrific conditions and the 2.3 million who live with HIV add up to 164.8 million needy children. And though at first glance that looks like a big number, 2.1 billion people on this earth proclaim to be Christians.

The truth is that if only 8 percent of the Christians would care for one more child, there would not be any statistics left.

Ahhhhh!

Here's another excerpt from her book.

But the Lord had also planted in me a desire to share the truth He had shown me in Uganda to the people who surrounded me now in America. I wanted to share with them the truth that while their children were alive today, more than sixteen thousand other children are not, because they died of hunger-related causes in the last twenty-four hours. I wanted them to know that another three thousand children in the world, mostly in Africa, will die of malaria today--malaria, which is both preventable and treatable. I wanted to share with them the truth that many of us seemed to have overlooked--that God wanted us to care for the poor, not just care about them, but to truly take care of them, and many of us were not doing so. God told us to love our neighbors as ourselves, but so many of our neighbors were starving to death while our tables were filled with abundance.

I keep thinking back to one part where she said a meal they splurge on costs about 60 cents a person. Wow. As much as I try to be mindful of how we spend our money, we still live in ridiculous luxury. I don't think luxury is necessarily bad, but what would happen if we tightened our budget and lived just a little bit more simply. Even if I couldn't physically love on a child right now, but us living more simply could save another child's life...wouldn't it be worth it?

Here's a question I keep asking myself...

What is it going to take for us to be proactive in our convictions?

Katie, as a young woman in her early 20's now, has a way of expressing the truth of God's Word--not just about how we should be taking care of "the least of these", but how our life can be turned upside down if we are just willing to say "yes" to Jesus. Of course I highly recommend reading her book, but if you want to look more in to her and what God has been doing through her life just read some of her blog.

some (overdue) projects

I've finally gotten around to cleaning the grout between our tile. I really had no idea how bad it was until I started doing it. I had cleaned it before with white vinegar and it seemed to work well. But then I decided to see what some baking soda and water would do.

Seriously. It's like I have a whole new floor! You can see the part I hadn't cleaned yet next to the nice white grout. It's amazing, well and gross at the same time. But still, amazing!

Another overdue project was to replace the fabric on our kitchen chairs.

You see...this table and chairs were given to us before we had children and they came with fabric cushions. Extremely comfortable, but not conducive to little ones eating yogurt on...or anything really.

These chairs have been through the ringer the last four years and were in desperate need of a redo. I had a major hold up for the longest time because I could not find fabric that I thought would work. But then my husband had a brilliant idea.

Our duvet on our bed needed to be replaced because of a growing hole in it, but I could not let go of it for the life of me because it was the perfect duvet. After about 6 months of looking for a new duvet we found one and finally replaced the old one. So...his idea was to use the old duvet to cover the chairs. I tell you...my husband is a genius! We also added a clear vinyl over the top so there will be easy clean-ups after meals. No more stains. No more stress.