The Meaning of "Noah Peter"

Noah- "comforter, peacemaker, preacher of righteousness"
A few days ago I wrote that I would do a post with why we chose "Noah Peter" and the meaning of the name. Obviously, we named Noah after the Noah in the Bible who built the ark :) While doing a read-through of the Bible last year I realized what faith in God Noah had to have in order to steadily build the ark over many, many years (may have been over 100 yrs.). Chapter 6 of Genesis brings us the beginning of the events that led up to the flood and the salvation of Noah and his family. Here are a few verses about Noah that led us to choose the name:
Gen. 6, verses 5 speaks of man's wickedness and that "every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." However, verse 8 says, "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." Verse 9 says, "Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God." After God gave Noah the instructions for building the ark, verse 22 says, "Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did." Our prayer is that our Noah will also walk with God and obey all that the Lord commands him.
The Noah in the Bible was obviously not perfect (as seen in Gen. 9), but I think this highlights even more how Noah's righteousness did not come from within himself. Noah was made righteous (God saw him as righteous) due to his faith in God and belief that God would keep His promises to save His people. We now know God fulfilled all His promises to mankind through providing His own son, Jesus, to die on the cross in the place of those who believe in Him. Noah was looking forward to Christ, while we stand looking back.

Peter- "rock"
Noah's middle name is after one of Jesus' 12 disciples. The book of 1 Peter (written by Peter) would have to be my favorite book in the Bible. My sophomore year in college I did a Bible study on 1 Peter which included reading the book 50 times and doing written studies for 5 days a week for 10 weeks. Although I had "accepted" Jesus as my savior when I was a child, I did not truly begin to seek Him and give Him my life until after I made some very bad decisions my freshman year and realized I could never be "good" enough on my own. I simply could not change myself while trying to do it through my own strength. I finally gave it up and told God that He needed to rule my life as I was making a pretty bad mess of things. :) God began to open my eyes to Himself and His grace through the Bible study of 1 Peter and other passages in scripture. I had read the Bible my entire life but all the sudden it became so exciting, and I started to grow spiritually. I was finally able to turn away from some sins I had always struggled with because what I found in Christ and His forgiveness and love was so much better and more fulfilling. I identify with Peter the most of all the disciples as Peter was impulsive and impatient like I am. Peter even denied knowing Jesus when He was led away to be crucified (Matthew 26), but Jesus forgave him and restored him (John 21:15 and ) so much so that Peter later became one of the pillars of the early church. Jesus says of Peter, "On this ROCK I will build my church."

Like Noah in Genesis, we pray Noah will walk with God and obey Him, and like Peter in the New Testament, we pray that Noah will find forgiveness and grow into a wise and faithful man.

Noah Update

Noah is now 1 week old! We've been enjoying him immensely and our only complaint is that he's not awake enough during the day! At least he's also sleeping well at night. Last night I fed him at about 11 p.m., he slept until I woke him up at 3 a.m., and then slept again until 8 a.m. Although I'm still tired from being up in the middle of the night, I feel pretty good and am happy with how things are going.
Weston, Grace and Elsie love to hold the baby and talk to him throughout the day. I was a little worried that Elsie would be jealous as she's pretty attached to Mommy. She hasn't shown any jealousy and loves to hold her brother and rub his head. My only concern is that she would try to pick the baby up by herself and drop him. We're pretty careful to not set him where she can step on him or pull him down.
We've also discovered that Noah likes to pee-pee when his diaper is off. He's "sprinkled" us almost every day! I've now learned to always have him on the plastic changing mat and try to keep him covered at all times. It can be challenging to try to wipe him, get a fresh diaper on him, and keep him covered all while he wiggles around. He also managed to do his #2 on me the other day. He's pretty talented for only 1 week old!
Mike has been off work since Noah was born and will also take a few days next week. I haven't even left the house since coming home from the hospital and we've all been enjoying some good family time. We've been blessed with meals from our church family, Household of Faith Community Church, almost every day which has been awesome! I'm so glad our church has been bringing meals as I heal from my c-section. My husband has many talents, but cooking is not one of them! I did get permission to share this funny story from this week. The other day I asked Mike if he would be willing to make some banana bread as we had some ripe bananas sitting on the counter. I teased him that I didn't know if he could do that without messing it up (he has a history of recipe blunders). He very proudly told me he could make banana bread without messing it up and he didn't even need my help. After the kids were in bed he set to work on the recipe. He seemed to be doing great and was obviously being very careful about following the recipe precisely. At one point he asked me where the cloves were and I told him they were on the spice rack with the black lid. Once the bread was in the oven it started to make our house smell soooo good. When it was done Mike cut a couple of big pieces and dug in. He started to say how it was good but that he must have gotten a pocket of cloves that weren't stirred in. He continued to eat for a few minutes before he realized something was very wrong. He went into the kitchen and held up the bottle of WHOLE cloves and asked me if this was what he was supposed to put in. I do have to give him credit that the whole cloves were on the spice rack with a black lid just as the GROUND cloves were. I was laughing so hysterically that my incision starting hurting pretty bad! Mike had to drink a bunch of milk and eat some cottage cheese to cut the burn from all the whole cloves he ate. It was so sad to throw those 2 beautiful loaves of banana bread into the garbage, but it did give us both a good laugh. :)
Here's a few photos from this week. I'll try to do another post soon with the meaning of Noah's name and why we chose it.

Here's Noah as our dinner-table centerpiece. We got the idea to put the baby on the table during meals from our friends, the Chupps, who used to put their baby, Selah, on the table while they ate. It's a good way to include him in the family even though he can't sit up yet.

Grace loving her brother.

Baby Noah Has Arrived!

Noah Peter

Sept. 19th at 2:25 p.m.

7 lbs, 5 oz. and 19" long

We are extremely tired but are doing well and so thankful to God for our new son. We'll post more photos later, but here's a few to start with.
Saturday morning

Big sister Grace

Big sister Elsie loves her new brother.

Big sisters and big brother with their special shirts on.

Mommy and Noah
Noah in the tummy a few hours before he's born :)

Prayer Request From Church's Prayer Chain

Please pray for this man's young wife. When you watch the news clip her joy in God is evident even as she grieves.

This was the prayer request sent out at church:

I would like to ask for prayer for my friend Preston Newby's family. Preston was a good friend of mine from Multnomah Bible College, and he was killed a couple days ago (9/15)as he was helping a stranded driver on I-5. Preston leaves behind a wife (Tara) and one young child. Tara is also pregnant with another child, which makes this time even more difficult. Please remember his family in prayer during this hard time. You can watch the news story on Preston's death here (http://www.katu.com/news/local/28491769.html?video=YHI&t=a). Thanks for your prayers.-- Steve Marquardt

Riley Jonathan is Here (Jane's Baby, Not Mine)!

Jane and Jon's new baby boy, Riley Jonathan, made his entrance into the world on Friday afternoon, Sept. 12th (his due-date)! Riley weighed in at 7lbs, 6 ozs and was 20" long. We are rejoicing with our friends at the birth of their first baby, and such a cute one too! Jane was blessed with a pretty easy delivery (the epidural sure did help :) As you can see from the photos, Jane doesn't even look like she just gave birth! Congratulations Jane and Jon!

New mommy with a tired smile. Only 4 more days for our new baby to be here!

Congratulations Kyle and Haley!

My brother and his girl, Haley, officially became engaged this past weekend! We are thrilled Kyle found such a wonderful girl to marry. The wedding will be Dec. 28th, 2008 (less than 4 months to plan)! They've asked Weston and Grace to be the ring-bearer and flower girl for the occasion and me to be a bridesmaid. We feel honored they would include us in the special event. Grace is thrilled about her upcoming job. Weston is not so thrilled, but I think he'll come around and get excited. He does remember how he received G.I. Joe toys for being in Eric and Christi's wedding :) The wedding will be pretty convenient for us as her family has lived in Gresham for over 30 years and all the festivities will be close by ;) After the wedding Haley will move to Georgia where Kyle is stationed with the army.

The beautiful ring!

Garden Veggies

Here's a photo of the kids holding some of our garden produce. We're now getting some ripe tomatoes, zucchini, and carrots. My spinach never did well. Unfortunately I had to pull all the sugar snap peas, sweet peas, and morning glories out as they had powdery mildew. By the time I realized what it was, it was too late :( We did get some good lettuce, but it's getting tough at this point. I was pulling the entire head out to eat until Julie informed me that you just clip leaves off to eat and the plant will continue to produce more. Hmmm...good thing I've got someone next door to tell me these things! I've also discovered Elsie likes to squirt the little tomatoes rather than eat them. She squirt herself in the eyes tonight and screamed until I washed them out. :)

This past weekend was spent planting a variety of shrubs and trees in our yard. The guys planted over 40 shrubs in two days which included 17 potentillas out in the area by the road. We finally got rid of the dandelions! I'll have to take and post some new photos of our yard and garden soon before it all starts to die.

Let me know if you want tomatoes, they will be coming out of our ears next week about the time the baby arrives!

8 More Days!

Only 8 more days until our baby boy is born (unless God has other plans)! My c-section is scheduled for the morning of Friday, Sept. 19th. I'm pretty uncomfortable at this point, but I'm doing pretty well. I've planned little things or get-togethers almost every day to keep busy and keep my mind off the waiting. My friend, Jane, came by today for a visit. Her due-date is Friday the 12th but she has an induction scheduled for the 19th. How funny if we end up having our boys on the same day! The bummer is that we wouldn't get to visit each other in the hospital (she'll be at Meridian Park and I'll be at Kaiser). I'm hoping, for her sake, that she doesn't go a week overdue.
We'll be excited to introduce little "Taco" (real name TBA), to all our friends and relatives in a week!

ABC's Terry Moran Flub About Obama's Parents on Nightline

Wow, what a moment for the history books!

2's Company and 3's a Crowd?

After our summer vacation we went ahead and moved Elsie into the "big kid" bedroom. We decided to move the three together and let the baby have his own room so that he won't keep others (except Mom and Dad) awake during the night. It was pretty wild the first couple of nights as Grace and Elsie were pretty excited to be sleeping so close. As the newness has worn off they've all been doing great and haven't been waking each other up. We'll most likely move Weston into a twin bed in the "boy" bedroom once the baby is sleeping through the night. For now, Elsie loves her little bed and has been staying in it until their nightlight turns on in the morning (it's their signal they can get up).

You can see why they had a hard time sleeping the first couple of nights :)