The promised pictures of new Baby DeBacker, Porter!

Porter 6 days old- See the cute babylegs his Aunt Christy made for him!

1st Easter- 8 days old.

His first Easter basket from Aunt Jana and Uncle JJ and a ducky from Corban and Lauren!

Porter's Bris- April 12th-The DeBacker Family and Dr. Kelber (the Mohel)


AJ, Porter and Dr. Kelber- Quick little sidenote, when Dr. Kelber was just starting out his practice as a family doctor here in Salem, he was the DeBacker's family doctor and AJ was his first baby he delivered in his new practice. It was a honor to have him perform our son's circumcision and we wanted to honor Al's Jewish heritage and have a Bris with a Mohel perform the ceremony. It was a very honoring event and God was honored as the ceremony is very Biblical and then also Al prayed a blessing over Porter and Corban and my brother Andy shared some very touching and honoring verses for Porter and for us as parents. Then we had a party that was put on my Al's dad and his wife, Gladys, yummy kosher food for all. It was a great day! Porter was tired and hungry so he did cry for the last half of the ceremony! Oh well, now we have lots of good pictures to remember it all by.

Dr. Kelber explains how the ceremony will go. Porter is asleep and has no idea what is about to happen!

The start of the ceremony.

The closing of the ceremony and Corban is reading some scripture and Porter is crying his eyes out, no one can really hear what Corban was reading but it was good.


Porter and Great Grandpa Ray DeBacker

I love sleeping on Daddy's chest.

Aren't I the cutest thing ever?

This picture doesn't do justice to the mullet or rat tail my child is sporting at birth!

AJ and I attended Bradley Birthing classes for 12 weeks prior to our birth with two other couples. We have all had our babies and so we got together this last weekend with our Bradley instructor to share our birth stories and show off our cute babes! So this is Porter in Blue with Audrey in pink and Zealand in green. Audrey is the oldest and then Zealand and then Porter a mere two weeks old. The other two are 3 months old already. It was fun to get together and share our experiences and see all the cute babies!

I promise...

Just wanted to thank everyone for all your prayers, thoughts and well wishes through this whole process. We are so happy to be home and got all unpacked last night and have a bunch of things to do today but I haven't forgotten and hope to get some pictures up. One big bummer is my camera for some reason decided to go on the fritz and AJ's camera is wonderful but huge so I am going to have to just get use to it. So I promise to get details and pictures up soon!

But I really can't complain as Porter is beautiful, healthy and a very good baby all his five days in our lives!

Porter Everett John DeBacker

This is auntie Jana, giving an update on baby DeBacker's arrival. After 30 hours of natural labor and 6 hours with an epidural, Maryanne's medical team ended up deciding that she needed a c-section, since she just wasn't progressing quickly enough.

Porter was born this morning. He's a big one: 9 pounds, 1.5 ounces, 20 inches. He has a full head of dark brownish-red hair and has been really calm so far. He loves his mamma. Every time the nurse has to do anything he just screams and screams, but as soon as he's back with Maryanne, he just settles right in and is calm as can be.

Both AJ and Maryanne are exhausted after about 48 hours of being awake, working hard and being stressed, but are both in great spirits! They'll be at Silverton Hospital until Monday if you want to visit.