Sophia! (and Nick & Marisa)

Click to see a little video:

sophiaslife

Today, Crestview Presbyterian Church, the church I have been working at for about 3 and 1/2 months now, had a little reception for us to welcome Sophia.  The timing of it was kind of cool as well, as today happens to be her one-month birthday. To be honest, we (particularly Marisa) was slightly nervous about it, as she can be a little overprotective and our Dr. mentioned that large gatherings and lots of people handling Sophia weren’t the best in the first couple of months.  However, all of the fears were proven wrong as it ended up being an absolutley WONDERFUl little event and we were so grateful for all of the people who made it happen.

We just have to say that we feel so blessed to be supported by such a wonderful “family” of Christians at Crestview.  We’ve already been feeling blessed as we have wonderful blood relatives who have been very supportive in welcoming Sophia, not to mention all of our various friends near and far (Ohio, California, Laos…) who have sent their congratulations, prayers, dinners, and gifts.  But today was like the icing on the cake, everyone was extremely kind and generous and supportive, and like I said, we just feel extremely blessed.

Not only has God blessed us with a wonderful little daughter, but also with a wonderful network of family, friends, and our faith-family to encourage and support us as we raise her (and by helping to provide lots of cute little pink outfits for her).    Thank you God.

In light of it being Halloween weekend, we thought it might be fun (well, I guess it was just me actually) to put some of Sophia’s “scarier” pictures up here.  She’s not always as cute as some of her pictures might lead you to believe.    Don’t let them freak you out too much…

Happy Halloween from Sophia!

This past Saturday we took Sophia to a pumpkin farm in Milford on our way over to Marisa’s mom’s house and had some good fall fun.  Then yesterday I left the camera home with Marisa and she took 183 (!!!) pictures of our little daughter.  I know I joked a few weeks ago about “another day, another 100 photos,” but wow, 183, that’s pretty impressive.  Good thing we have a digital camera and aren’t still using film…

Anyhow, have a great Halloween!  Sophia’s going to enjoy eating lots of Reese’s cups and Butterfingers and rotting out her teeth that she doesn’t even have yet!

So with Marisa somewhat debilitated these days (you know, she’s pretty much stuck in the three hour cycle of feed Sophia, burp Sophia, attempt to sleep… and eat/ shower when time allows) I’ve been doing lots of laundry these days.  And let me add, with a poopy little baby around, there’s lots of laundry to do.  Anyhow, yesterday Sophia decided she was going to help me do the laundry:

So, needless to say, things are getting a little busy around here.  As much as I would love to spend all of my time sitting around holding Sophia, there are other things in life which have required my attention, which begins to make things a little challenging trying to figure out the balance…

Anyhow, here’s some more pics…

I have to admit, having a little baby is turning me into a softy.  This evening I was going through my emails, reading many awesome messages from all of you of congratulations and encouragement, and I got to one e-card (read it here) about “my little lamb” and that the Lord would bless her, and it got me all choked up.  Yeah, it was cheesy, but aren’t those my exact prayers for her?  That God would be with her and bless her as she follows Him?  So you combine that with some cute little lamb pictures, and then I look to my right and see this precious little thing laying in her bassinet next to me, and the next thing I know, I’m brought to tears.  I’m a crying little baby, just like her.

Since when I do I cry about babies?  I guess ever since I had one of my own…

Thank you ALL for your congratulations and support during this time.  It means a lot to us.

OK, so maybe 100 is a bit of an exaggeration, but man, we sure have been taking lots of pictures of this little girl of ours. You know, ever since the “digital revolution” Marisa and I have developed a bit of a problem with taking pictures (we have over 18,000 in our iPhoto library!) and as my dad pointed out this evening, this is only going to get worse with our little Sophia. With an old school film camera, one would only take a picture if it was something really good, but nowadays, we take pictures of everything, and not only one picture but often 2 or 3 to make sure we got that right shot we were looking for. Anyhow, Here’s some highlights from the past couple of days…

I have had some time this afternoon as Marisa has been taking a nap, to just sit and hold my child in my arms, pray, and spend some time connecting with God. Obviously, the last few days have been more than a little hectic, and though I have been constantly praising God in the midst of it all, this is the first chance I’ve had to really reflect and spend a good chunk of time praying and reflecting on all that’s taken place.

As I was praying, I was just reminded of how freakin blessed I am. This is just such an adorable child that I am holding in my arms, and I have done nothing to deserve her, it is only by God’s grace that I am blessed with her. And I cannot praise God enough that she is healthy and doing so well in her first days out in this world.

In the midst of reflecting on her health and how blessed I feel, I was reminded of my dear friends in Laos, and of some of the little kids in our neighborhood that we got to know in our time there.

When I think of our birthing experience, and our time thus far with all of our anti-germiness and cleanliness and diapers and butt-wipes, and then I juxtapose that with the environment many of our little Lao friends were growing up in, I just cannot help but feel all the more blessed at the level of sanitization and health that those of us born in countries like the U.S. come to expect as normal. Now I do have to say that thankfully none of the little kids in Laos that we became friends with got deathly sick or had any terrible diseases, at least in the year that we were there, but the possibility of those is so real and so present, as many of the Lao people have so little. We did hear of a friend of a friend in Laos who died from pneumonia. I didn’t know people still died from pneumonia, because is the U.S. that is pretty rare, but in places like Laos, that is such a real and imminent danger. Things that we have simple vaccinations and over-the-counter medicines for, they just don’t have.

I feel like now the challenge for me is to not just think “Well gosh, I sure I am lucky to have my baby in the U.S., that stinks for the rest of the world,” but instead to take this blessing I have received and do something about it. What that is at this point, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll support another Compassion child in honor of Sophia, maybe she can have a little “brother” or “sister” who we support on the other side of the world, or maybe down the road we will adopt a parentless child from one of these countries… I don’t know, but my prayer is that I don’t let the blessing stop with me, but I instead allow it to flow through me to others.

After I was thinking about the little Lao children and our baby, I was also reminded of the most famous baby of all time, Jesus Christ. An added irony is that last Wednesday at the youth group that I lead the lesson that I taught was on the birth of Jesus. We are doing a series looking at the life of Jesus, and even though it’s not Christmas or anything, we were in the second week last Wednesday which looked at the birth of Jesus. How ironic that only hours after I was teaching a group of teenagers about the humble little baby Jesus that stepped into the world, my own wife would be going into labor to bring our own little child into this world.

As I sat praying and reflecting today I wanted to read something in my Bible and I was drawn to again read the passage that I taught on last Wednesday, the birth story of Jesus found in Luke 2. Verses 6 and 7 mention so casually, “While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” It is mentioned so briefly that it makes it all seem so simple, clean, and easy. I think this is only furthered by our not-so-historically accurate images of Christmas and the “silent night, all is calm” that we tend to think of. Well, I can now tell you from firsthand experience that the “time for a baby to be born” is anything but calm, silent, or gentle. But like I referred to before, we were in a nice, comfortable, clean hospital with nurses and Doctors all around to help us. But Joseph, Mary, and Jesus had none of that. Instead they were in a dirty nasty stable with animals all around. And they had no bassinet with the Angel Care monitor, instead they had a manger. A trough that animals eat out of. There was no dissinfecting there. (I guess, though, that they did have some true “Angel Care” monitoring going on)

Wow. Could Jesus have come in any more humble of a way? As I think about these past couple days and think about how delicate and dependent my little Sophia is, and then I think about Jesus choosing to come to earth in this humble and dependent way, I am just overwhelmed yet again at the love that He had for us to be willing to humble himself so much and come as such a servant, to live in this dirty world, and then to go and die for us. He has modeled for us the ultimate example of humility. And I now have a 24/7 reminder of that.

Sophia arrived this past Thursday, October 2nd, at 2:28pm. weighing 6 pounds 4 ounces and 20 inches long.  We feel so blessed to have such a wonderful healthy little baby.  Here are some pictures of her first few days out in the world:

So for those of you who have been following this blog since our days in Laos, you will notice the look has changed a bit, as has the content. 

Our original goal of this site was to keep in touch with all of our friends, family, and supporters as we served in Laos.  We feel like this was a wonderful blessing to our ministry there (thanks again Michael Lee!).  Since we arrived back, honestly, we haven’t used it much, but we figured now would be a great time to revive it and post pictures and stories about our wonderful new little daughter, Sophia (who, ironically, happens to have the same first and middle name as the daughter of the provider of this site).

So for all of you friends and family spread out across the globe, I hope you enjoy seeing pictures of our little daughter

(If any of you would like to read our previous posts regarding Laos, just email me for the password.)