What's in a name?

It would seem that I am entering the “questioning what to name our daughter” period of the year. This seems to come around annually, so let’s hope that our girl is home by the time it comes around again, cuz this is driving me crazy.

Growing up I was sure that I would have a girl, and that I would name her Madeline, after my grandma (I was named after both of my grandmas). Having come up against infertility, that dream seemed to go out the window. That’s not to say that Madeline isn’t a beautiful name – it is, I still love it, but it doesn’t seems appropriate for a girl of African heritage. Then, much more recently, I decided that I loved the name Wren (hence the name of the blog), but for some reason, that name has fallen out of my favour recently. Good thing we didn’t tell everybody that was going to be our daughter’s name. Oh wait, we did. Sigh. Now I’m at a loss again. I don’t want her name to be too weird, or too common, and I want to use her Ethiopian name as her middle name. Depending on what her name is, we may even keep it as her first name. I am drawn to names that start with Z, for zome reason, but some of the ones I like are already “taken”, and I seem to be having a bit of time “selling” Andrew on the other ones I like. Some of the Z names you see on websites are just plain odd – Zephyr? Zeppelin? Seriously? Isn’t calling your daughter Zeppelin just setting her up for a lifetime of weight issues? Zoe, I like, and Zala. Now I just have to get Andrew to like one of those names too. Last time he vetoed one of the names I suggested, I asked him what were the names that he liked. He didn’t really have an answer. I want us to agree on this, and to pick a name that we both like, but it’s tough when one of you doesn’t seem to care too much about it.

Speaking of things Ethiopian, our close friends (through adoption) are in Ethiopia as we speak, getting ready for their court date tomorrow. I don’t know if they read this blog, but even if they don’t, I want to put this out into the universe. I hope they pass their court date first go, and that the MOWA letter is ready & waiting for them, so they don’t have to wait to be their little boy’s parents “officially”. I’ve been thinking about them all weekend. I also hope that their first meeting with their boy went well. I can’t wait to be in their shoes.

In other speaking-of-things-Ethiopian news, tomorrow also marks 29 months since our dossier first arrived in Ethiopia. I hope that there aren’t too many more months that pass before we know who our daughter is. In the most recent update, the review of orphanages throughout Ethiopia has resulted in some of them being closed. Apparently, this has resulted in an increase of children coming into the orphanages we work with. While it is not good that so many children need to be in orphanages, this might be bringing us closer to our daughter, and to me, that is a good thing. What is not such a good thing? The current state of our dossier, which is STILL not back in Ethiopia. Apparently, it’s still waiting on the statutory declaration (which, seriously?). It’s been over 3 months now that we’ve been waiting, and I’m hoping that’s because the embassy is busy doing other, more important things, and not because there’s something missing from our paperwork. I’ve been assured that there’s nothing missing, but seriously – it took 3 weeks to get the stat dec the first time around. Three weeks! According to the agency, we can still get a referral because our paperwork is up to date, but I would really love to get that updated stat dec in our file & get it back over to Ethiopia. Does it suck when things like this are out of our control? Yes, yes it does.

In baby’s room news, it’s painted, and we bought the crib this past weekend. Not the mattress, just the crib. About a year ago we bought a dresser from Ikea that was tall & white, because we thought it best fit the vision we had of the room at the time (and it was in our price range). We assembled it a couple of weeks ago, and found it no longer fits our vision of the room. We do have a dresser in the spare bedroom that Andrew has had for ages (at least 20 years) that does fit a lot better into the vision – it’s longer & shorter than the other dresser, and almost matches the bookcase that is already in the room. Best of all, we can use it as a change-table, if we add a baby changing cushiony thing (I can’t remember the actual name). I plan to change the drawer handles from the current plastic bar handle to possibly 2 glass-look knobs per drawer (you know what I’m talking about, they are old school), preferably in green, pink & purple, to match the colour scheme of the room. I will post pictures of the completed room, I promise. We have to wait another week to put the decal on the wall (above the “new” low dresser), then we’ll assemble the crib & we’ll be done. Kind of.

Well, that’s all from here. Until next time, I bid you adieu.