Spring is almost here!

We are so glad that the days are finally getting longer and warmer. We are taking advantage of every opportunity to get out of the house and into the fresh air.


Jesse also has a new toy. James and I went out on a date last night while my parents watched him and we did some shopping while we were out. Of course, we just had to buy something for Jesse. We got him a play gym and he absolutely loves it! I mentioned in my previous post that he loves his mobile above his crib. "Loves" is probably an understatement; he is obsessed. Well, on Saturday morning we woke up around 8 a.m. and James went in to check on Jesse (he had woken up at 4:30 to eat, but had fallen back asleep). It turns out he was already awake, just laying in bed kicking his legs and happily staring at the animals on the mobile. We figured that he is at just the right stage to begin enjoying a play gym, so we went ahead and got one. The picture below indicates his reaction to it:

If you can't tell, it was like Christmas for this kid! He loves looking at all the toys hanging from it, and he can even manage to hit them sometimes. It's quite entertaining for us, too!

A Look Back at 2010

I just recently came across a post I began in early January but never finished. I realize it's a little late to be reflecting on 2010, but since I had already begun, I figured I might as well finish. It's crazy to look back at January of 2010 and see all the changes that have taken place in our lives over the past year. We have a lot to be thankful for, the biggest thing being Jesse, but we also have seen God at work in ways we never would have expected this time last year (e.g. leaving Bulgaria). God has been faithful through it all and we wouldn't have it any other way.

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2010 has been a pretty eventful year for us, so I thought I'd recap it with some of the highlights.

January: We got settled into a regular routine with our Bulgarian language lessons. In one of my sessions I learned to make a banitsa, a traditional Bulgarian pastry.

February: We had our first real Mexican meal in months (a big deal when you love Mexican food as much as we do), thanks to a care package from back home.


March: We celebrated "Baba Marta" in Bulgaria on March 1st. "Baba Marta" means "grandmother March" and is a national holiday celebrating the first day of spring, although as you can tell from our coats in this picture, spring had not come yet.


James and I also took a trip to Istanbul, Turkey for fun. Here we are at the point where the Bosphorus Straits meet the Black Sea.



April: We took a road trip to Romania with Jon and Andrea to visit teammates in Transylvania. Here I am in Dracula's hometown.


May: Spring finally came to Bulgaria, and we found out we were expecting Jesse two days before James' birthday!


Jesse's very first picture, that tiny white speck in the middle:

June: We moved to a new apartment in Sofia in order to have a warmer place for the baby. My parents also came for a visit, and we did some traveling around Bulgaria and took a trip to Venice.



July: We found out that we were having a boy, and James' parents came for a visit. While they were there, we took a week-long road trip all over Bulgaria.



August: We made one of the toughest decisions we've ever had to make when we decided to leave Bulgaria. We spent our final days there with our friends/teammates and their little boy before we had to say our goodbyes. On one of the days we all took the chairlift up Mt. Vitosha, which can be seen all over Sofia.


September: We went camping at Petit Jean with James' family.



October: We went camping again, this time at Devil's Den on Halloween weekend. We had lots of fun carving pumpkins.



November: This year we were super thankful to get to spend Thanksgiving with our families after being overseas the previous Thanksgiving and Christmas.



December: Jesse was showered with gifts from our wonderful family and friends!


It was a great year!

The First Two Months

I can't believe that our little guy is the same baby we brought home from the hospital two months ago. He has grown and changed so much. I still remember rocking him to sleep one night that first week with tears in my eyes (mostly happy tears, tinged with some sadness, likely the result of those wonderful postpartum hormones) as I thought ahead to the boy and someday man that Jesse will become. A part of me felt joy as I realized how blessed I was to be entrusted with the responsibility of this new life, and as I looked forward to seeing who Jesse would become someday, but another part of me felt sorrow because I didn't want this precious little baby to ever grow up. Even though there are times when I just want to freeze the moment and keep this little boy from growing up so quickly, I know that I don't want to hinder him from becoming the person God wants him to be. It is a joy to see him learning new things and changing each day, and I am so thankful to have the privilege of staying home with him. I think it's the best job ever, and each night when I go to bed I look forward to a new day together (even though those days are starting a little earlier than I might prefer).

There are lots of things I want to remember about these first two months, but I will just jot down a few here:

• At his two-month check-up, he weighed 13 pounds and 3 ounces and was nearly 24 inches long, which puts him in the 90th percentile for weight and length. His doctor says he is just perfect and is growing like a weed!
• This little boy is a champion sleeper. It is one of his favorite activities, and I'm pretty sure that it's nothing we have done, because he slept pretty well from day one. It was so hard to wake him up to eat that first week, and he would have slept longer than 4 hours at night, but we set an alarm so that I could get up and feed him. Once he regained his birth weight, the doctor said just to let him sleep as long as he wanted at night, and so we did. By two weeks he was sleeping one 5-6 hour stretch at night, and now he typically sleeps for seven hours, and if we're really lucky, eight. He also naps very well throughout the day and has been starting to put himself on a loose schedule of three naps a day (morning, afternoon and evening) with some short catnaps interspersed.
• He has definitely been developing a personality, especially these past few weeks. He is most alert first thing in the morning and will just smile and "talk" with us for quite a while. I read to him from his 'Jesus Storybook Bible' most days (even though I know he doesn't understand the words yet, I figure it's a good habit for us to start now) and he just grins the biggest grins as he "listens". I know it's just from the colors on the page and the intonation in my voice, but I like to pretend that he is comprehending. ;)
  
• Often he prefers being laid down on a blanket or in his crib to being held. He will just lay there and kick his legs and stare at his toys. He especially loves his mobile above his crib. Last night he was wide awake when we put him to bed, but he was content just laying in bed looking at the animals on his mobile. Whenever we would turn out the lights, though, he would begin to cry. We figured out that it was because he couldn't see the mobile, because as soon as we turned the lights back on, his crying immediately ceased and he again began to focus intently on the animals.
• I would say that he enjoys going on walks, but I think I enjoy them way more than he does, considering he has slept through 95% of our walks. I am ready for spring to really be here so that we can make it a part of our daily routine.
• He loves music! We sing to him a lot, and if all else fails, this usually calms him down. I am going to have to build my repertoire of kid songs, though, because I feel like I sing the same 10 or 15 every day. He also can't stand it when the music stops on his bouncer seat or mobile, so we are constantly restarting it.

Here he is enjoying his bath-time. James' mom came over to see Jesse last night, and we thought it would be a good chance to get some pictures of the two of us giving him a bath. The first two tub baths were kind of rough, but now he really enjoys the warm water. He just doesn't like getting out.

He still prefers being laid on his back, but he enjoys his "tummy time" more and more each day:

I'm still having a hard time getting over how he got from this tiny baby:

to this: