Hullo from the 'hood...

Mummyhood that is! Yes, the blessed event finally happened on May 16th at 2:04pm. May I present to you the lovely miss Jade Violet Alisa Lowry!

She weighed 6lbs 10.5 oz, 19 inches long but is now up to 7lbs 7oz and is verrrry long...thanks to daddy's genes. She is growing way too fast for Mummy's liking. *sigh* She makes snorty piggy noises when she's angry and honks like a Canada goose when she's content. I can't get enough of her toes and fingers and belly. As for the name, which probably seems huge for such a wee girl, here is the story behind it.

D and I had been volleying names back and forth for months. Our tastes are very different and so we had a hard time agreeing on anything for a girl. We had a very short list for boys (of course). After Jade was born, she was referred to as "sweet pea" for 4 days because we STILL couldn't decide on a name. I think the nurses were getting rather disgusted with us. And then, as I was lying in that wretched hospital bed, recovering from the C-section while Sweet Pea got light therapy for her jaundice, I started mulling over a conversation I'd had with my brother-in-law about a month previously.

C was filling up my errant Kia's tires with air in the shop on the farm. Suddenly he looked up at me and said, "Kimmy, I have the perfect name. Your troubles are over. Jade Lowry. Just add whatever your mother's name was in the middle." And he grinned in triumph. Hmm, I thought. Kinda strippery. Kinda catchy. I politely nodded but wasn't really won over at the time.

The more I thought about it in that hospital bed, and the more I came to know Sweet Pea's personality, the more I realized that she was not a Grace or a Madeleine or a Danielle or a Taylor. She was a Jade! And really, C has done so much for us over these past two years - the least we could do is let him name our child.

D liked the name Jadyn, which means "God has heard us" so it was a good compromise. Also, the stone Jade is said to have mystical, heart-healing properties; what better way to heal hearts so bruised after two losses than with sweet baby Jade's arrival. And as my sister Tanzi reminded me, I wrote several stories when I was younger that featured a main character named Jade.

As for Violet, it's my favourite flower, and I found them in bloom all over Someday farm's lawns the week Jade before was born. Alisa was my mother's name; she died in 1993. She was a strong, sophisticated, intelligent woman who had a gift for friendship. I can only hope that Jade will inherit these qualities from the Babushka she never got to meet.

So there's the scoop for now. Sorry to have kept you in suspense, bloggy friends! I hope to do more entries, but I'm telling ya, it's darned hard to type blog entries with one finger while nursing. (0: We are all well and healthy and very, very happy. Thanks for all your prayers and warm wishes. I'll be back soon...