a letter to my baby

My precious Baby Soup,

I am so sorry that you will never be able to lead the life we all expected you to live. I don't have any of the answers to all the questions swirling around in my head. But I do know that even though you were so small we had a great connection and a great love. Most of the time our love connection was through morning sickness and cravings for fried food and ice cream, but also through all the time I spent wondering. I wondered what your sweet little face would look like, whether I would buy your first outfits on the boy or girl side of gymboree, and how captivated your brother and sister would be by you. But even though all of these wonderings will stay just that, thoughts in my head, you changed our lives. You taught us to love each other a little more each day, hug a little tighter, and to cherish each moment we have with each other. Though you may not fulfill the life that you deserved, know that you were always loved, always wanted, and will always be missed.

Love,
your mommy

Our Baby

A few days ago we had a sonogram that showed that we had lost our baby. Please pray for us during this time as we try to heal and move forward from this awful nightmare.

Amazing huh?

How your baby's growing:

Your new resident is nearly an inch long — about the size of a grape — and weighs just a fraction of an ounce. She's starting to look more and more human. Her essential body parts are accounted for, though they'll go through plenty of fine-tuning in the coming months. Other changes abound: Your baby's heart finishes dividing into four chambers, and the valves start to form — as do her tiny teeth. The embryonic "tail" is completely gone. Your baby's organs, muscles, and nerves are kicking into gear. The external sex organs are there but won't be distinguishable as male or female for another few weeks. Her eyes are fully formed, but her eyelids are fused shut and won't open until 27 weeks. She has tiny earlobes, and her mouth, nose, and nostrils are more distinct. The placenta is developed enough now to take over most of the critical job of producing hormones. Now that your baby's basic physiology is in place, she's poised for rapid weight gain.



Wow, it is so exciting to know my baby is growing each week! It is weird....with Jackson we had tried for a long time and so I was so excited about him and thought about him every day. This time around if I don't have any morning sickness or my pants actually button the first time, I don't even think about being pregnant at all. I am just too busy! Maybe that will make the time fly by. I am so excited to meet this new little bundle of joy. We even gave it a nickname thanks to his big brother. I asked him what he would like to name the baby and he said, "SOUP!" So yeah, while Soup Aarseth is probably not going on his/her birth certificate, we affectionately refer to it as Baby Soup. :) never a dull moment here I tell ya.

Are we crazy?

Welcome to my brand new blog! I am so excited about all the changes coming up in our lives and how God is moving and guiding us. We are thrilled to be able to share with you as we embark on this new journey.....so what's all the big news?


Well, I am sure by the title you can tell we are now expecting our third little babe! Baby #3 is expected to make his or her arrival sometime in October and we are beyond thrilled. Jackson and Olivia are very confused and excited about the baby in mommy's tummy.

The other big news is that we have decided to become full time missionaries with SIM in Ethiopia. We have felt God calling us towards missions for a while now and we have spent the last year praying and preparing for how this will look for our family. We are so happy about SIM and being apart of such a great organization. Our time frame for leaving is fall of 2011.

What are we doing in Ethiopia? Well we are still waiting for that to be finalized and it should be very soon, but you know how things run when you are on Africa time....if things go as planned right now, it is a great fit for our family and we are excited to share it with you all soon, so stay tuned!

So, are we crazy? This was the question that I asked my sweet husband as we were laying in bed one night after coming home from a week spent at our mission agency in North Carolina. Without skipping a beat, he said uh yeah, I think we are. So there you have it....the question I am sure you were just asking yourself! We are crazy! We are crazy for God and his people. We are crazy for our sweet kiddos, and we are crazy for each other. And we are happy to be on this crazy adventure that God has called us to.

As for this blog, I would absolutely love to be able to keep our family, friends, and supporters up to date with what is going on with us. The next 18 months will be filled with baby growing, studying, training, support raising, and lots of praying!

To kick off this new blog I am going to do a fun giveaway to support one of my favorite organizations, Compassion International. If you want to be the proud owner of one of these cool t-shirts that support orphans and people living in poverty all over the world just leave a comment to enter! Giveaway ends on March 8th. For extra entries:

1. Become a follower of Raising 3 Babes in the 3rd world and leave me a comment telling me you did so.
2. Blog or post to Facebook, or even Twitter about our new blog and the giveaway and leave a comment telling me you did so. One entry for each one!
3. If you sponsor a child with Compassion International, leave me a comment with the country from where your child is from (this is on your honor of course!).

If you win, you can choose from:

The Child Survival T-Shirt
Compassion's Child Survival Program means the difference between life and death for vulnerable babies. Translated in Hindi, survival means "protect life". Join the fight for life, a portion of the proceeds will go directly to the Child Survival Program.

The Global Food Crisis T-shirt- Creole
Eco navy heather tee shirt, imprinted with Please design in Creole on front and back and Compassion International logo

The Global Food Crisis T-shirt- Spanish
Eco red heather tee shirt, imprinted with Please design in Portuguese on front and back and Compassion International logo


The Global Food Crisis T-shirt -Bengali
Eco green heather tee shirt, imprinted with Please design in Bengali on front and back and Compassion International logo

or my personal favorite......

Global Food Crisis T-shirt- Amharic (Ethiopia's national language)
Eco black heather tee shirt, imprinted with Please design in Amharic on front and back and Compassion International logo (It looks like the others but for some reason I could only get the zoomed in view!)

We hope that you join us in prayer as we prepare to raise 3 babes in the 3rd world!