Finn after a bath

I have grown to love bath time! Up until about a week ago, bath time was followed by a not-so-fun meltdown time. But we changed the time of day to a less conducive to meltdown time of day and voila! After bath time has now become one of my favorites. He's not as talky and smiley in the video as he is sometimes, but I thought it was fun nonetheless. Please excuse my high-pitched voice...

God is great! Listening to this sermon right now...it is amazing.
"The Glory of God, the Lostness of Man, and the Gospel of Christ"
http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/conference-messages/the-glory-of-god-the-lostness-of-man-and-the-gospel-of-christ#/watch/full

Recent pics

Since I know that you're probably checking this for an update on our little mufFinn, I am going to make your day with some recent pics! :)

Finn and I talking and looking at each other (we do this a lot :))

Smiling for daddy-- he's smiling more and more!

Finn stretching after a nap next to Ho Ho (the nap wasn't next to Ho Ho, just the stretching)

Two pictures from a 20 picture photo shoot I took trying to get one of him smiling! I think the camera makes him not smile bc as soon as it came out that smile went away! But he's still TOO cute.

Sleeping in the sling.

After a bath with his buddy/favorite toy, Mr. Elephant.

Our new game! We hold his hands and raise him up from a laying down position. And then he sits like this! His neck is getting so strong.

It is so fun getting to spend every day with him. I can't believe this gets to be my job! What a joy and blessing he is. Praising God with all my heart, and even more than for the gift of our son is for the gift of His own :) 

Enjoying Him and him

Hi friends!! We are having a great week here. God is so gracious! A few posts ago I wrote about our efforts in helping Finn nap. It was good, but exhausting. It's tough when it takes 45 minutes to help baby fall asleep on his own! And then he'd sleep for 30 minutes, wake up, and we'd do the same thing again. It led to a stressful few days. I found myself constantly watching the clock, stressed, and no longer enjoying my little boy. I prayed a lot and asked God for wisdom. And He has been so kind! I read something that said babies start to learn to self-soothe around 3 months. It's not that I didn't like holding him, it was just that it was impractical to literally hold him all the time. But reading that was really helpful and reassuring about not trying to rush and get ahead of the game but just enjoy my precious newborn! Our efforts however, did pay off, in that Finn will now go down for a nap in his crib and sleep for 30-45 minutes. I learned that a good baby nap is generally at least an hour and a half, so when he wakes up after I've had all that time to get stuff done, I'll go in and pick him up and put on my sling carrier. Then I can read, blog, or get whatever else done that I can do while sitting for the second half of his nap. He has been so well rested and so jolly because of it! And I am happy because I still get to hold him, but I also have time to do things. I am so thankful to the Lord!
I was also thinking that that can happen in our relationships with Him. We get so focused on our goals...what we're trying to accomplish... even if it's a good thing... and all of a sudden we find that we are disconnected from Him some how, more distant in our hearts, and just not enjoying Him anymore the way we're meant to. He is precious! It is amazing to me to think about the incredible love of God for us. I think of how my heart just feels like it's going to burst sometimes with love when I look at Finn, how I tell him at least 15 times a day that I love him just because I can't help it-- and I am struck by how much greater God's love is for His children.
"How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" 1 John 3:1
John, Jesus' friend and disciple, was struck by it too. He couldn't help exclaiming about the greatness of the love of God. Because Jesus, God's son, loved us and gave himself for us, we can become God's sons and daughters in Him through repentance and faith.

Discovered "facechat" this week. Such a blessing! "Mimi" (my mom) has been able to talk with us twice and get her dose of Finn. Also this week... week 3 of "Pancake Saturdays". We thought it would be fun to have a tradition of having pancakes on Saturday mornings (chocolate chip, of course) and having friends over to enjoy them with us. We have loved it so far! It's hard to believe we've only been here 3 weeks. Yesterday we read on baby center.com that at Finn's age you can begin to lie the baby down, hold their hands and raise them up to sitting position to practice holding their neck up. We did it and it was amazing! While we held his hands he just sat up holding his head up for the longest time! I'll have to post a pic-- we were so excited and amazed!

Every day is a gift and adventure in the Lord :)

Agoo!

Finn's talking! Okay, I guess not TALKING per say...but he is really getting more and more verbal. In my opinion, he's always been a pretty noisy baby (noisy in the positive sense...I love all his grunts, moans squeals and squeaks!) but now he is just going to town! His favorite thing to "say" is "agoo". I'm pretty sure it means, "I love you".

Finn pics

Well it's been a week so I last wrote... and so much has happened since then! Over the past two months in the States, Finn developed the, well, inability to sleep anywhere but in our arms. At night he'd sleep in his bassinet but during the day, it had to be arms! And it's important for babies to get sleep, so I held him a lot and when it was time for him to take a nap I even helped him fall asleep. So then, he learned the inability to fall asleep. This is very common with babies. In America though, though it was a little bit of a hindrance, we had grandmas who loved to hold him too :) Plus, I love to hold him close and smell him and delight in him! However, coming back to EA, it was my number one goal to buckle down and help this sweet baby learn--we were here two days and not a THING was unpacked! Once he'd wake up from a nap in my arms, I'd put him down and run around like a mad woman trying to accomplish something...but that's time I want to spend with him! So it was time to figure out a plan. Oftentimes though, teaching your baby how to sleep comes in two forms--either letting the baby cry it out or them not learning. But he's still so little and the crying it out was unbearable. But God has been so gracious to show us an in-between! It goes like this... when it's naptime, we have a naptime ritual, the same every time. I swaddle him and then hold him while I walk around the room and sing him a song. This calms him down because it's hard for babies to go from lots of light and stimulus to boom! nap! So we have that calm down time. Then I put him in his crib and sit beside him. I pat his belly or let him suck my finger (he hates pacifiers) but ONLY to the point of drowsiness, not sleep. Then I stop. A lot of times, this almost asleep baby will wake right up at that point. So then we do it again. And then again. But I really think he's learning, and he has for the past three days actually slept in his crib! However, around halfway through his nap, when the sleep cycle changes, he wakes up like clockwork! I try to get him to fall back asleep in his crib, but if he simply can't, I hold him. That has been what we've done today and yesterday and I feel a lot better about it than him simply not getting enough sleep at the cost of learning to fall asleep. God is giving me strength each day...it's like our daily bread. He gives us enough to get through each day and allows us to lean on and rely on Him. So that's been what's been doing on at home this week. It has been full blown baby sleep boot camp...I write everything down...and am really trying to help him because how much would it stink to only be able to fall asleep if someone patted you on the back while rocking you and sticking a finger in your mouth! Still a work in progress!

I left my camera in America (thankfully, it's on the way!) so I don't have any pics yet to post, but I do have these amazing pictures that were taken by my super talented (and wonderful) friend Kristin Moore when Finn was maybe about...5 weeks old? Enjoy!

Color:

http://kristinmoorephoto.smugmug.com/Family/Finn-David-Zinn 

BW:

http://kristinmoorephoto.smugmug.com/Family/Finn-David-Zinn-BW

We're here

It's amazing to think about what God has done in our lives. As I type this, I'm cradling the most precious baby in my left arm (I'm getting better at one-handed typing!) Our dog is sitting next to me on the couch, joyfully chewing her bone. When we got into EA last night I was marveling at what God has done in two years. I remember like it was yesterday arriving here two years ago-- barely knew a soul, couldn't understand a thing, didn't have a place to live-- we had arrived in a foreign country. But when we got in yesterday, it wasn't like that. Our dear friend came and met us at the airport and it was a joyful reunion. She even had her cousin's husband come with her because he has a car and she didn't want us to have to take a taxi. She has become family. We got here and introduced Finn to our apartment, and I can't stop rejoicing that he's here with us. Our family has grown and I just LOVE our new addition! It's already getting hard to remember what things were like without him. When we got here last night there were signs on the wall welcoming us and a note with breakfast for today on the table. What a blessing! Friends have already stopped by an it was so good to see them. The water man came and brought us water. The dog park came and brought us Ho Ho! My point is, I am so thankful for God's kindness to us these past two years. This place isn't foreign anymore, it's home.

Well, I know that if you're reading this it's very likely that you're looking for info about Finn...

speaking of Finn, that was as far as I got on that post! Because then he woke up! ;) More to come...