Welcoming Silas

As many of you probably already know, we welcomed our sweet little boy into the world a week ago Saturday! Silas Ray Vinh Tran was born at 2:26 pm on December 11th, weighing in at 7 lbs. 2 oz. and 20 inches long.

He surprised us like his sister by coming early. Nora had come 9 days early, so I was expecting him to make his entrance around the 15th or 16th, but little Silas was even more eager than his big sis and came 13 days early (due date was Christmas Eve)!

Many have asked about his name. "Silas" has always been Thang's favorite boy's name, since before we were even married and I quickly fell in love with it. The name comes from the book of Acts in the Bible, Silas was one of Paul's missionary partners. It means "of the forest". Based on his name, we are specifically praying Psalm 1 for our boy...

Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.

Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

"Ray" is a family name. My grandpa's name was Raymond , but went by Ray and my dad's middle name is Ray. I wanted to pass this name along since my dad didn't have a male heir to pass on the Faust name. It took a little convincing for Thang as he thought "Silas Ray" might sound a little too close to the name of a certain "achy-breaky" country singer. However, I think Silas Ray would make a good name for a Blues guitarist...

"Vinh" is Vietnamese and means "glory". If we have more boys, this will also be their middle name. In the Vietnamese culture, all the boys of a certain generation have the same middle name, so the pressure was on to pick a good name since we were not just choosing it for this child!

We are loving our little boy, and, honestly right now he is making it pretty easy on us by still sleeping about 23 hours a day. His timing turned out to be pretty perfect as Thang was able to take a week off when he was born and he now has 2 weeks of Christmas vacation...giving us 3 full weeks together! I may just get too used to this!

Enjoy a few pictures from the last 10 days...

What a blessing it is this Christmas to celebrate the birth of our Savior while holding our own little boy in our arms!