So much to say.
There's a new person living here. He's very sweet. His name is Charles. He goes by Charlie, mostly.
As for names and naming, I have this to say. Brian and I are either serious rebels or serious ingrates... Why? We have broken tradition. We have given our children (mostly) their own names and no one elses. There is a long standing tradition among upstanding standers of naming people after people. Well, we had a lot of people we wanted to honor by naming our kids after them, but we ended up *not.* Here's my theory: There are so many people that we hope our children will emulate, that we couldn't choose between them all, so we struck out on the less traveled path of names. But really, it comes down to me. I am the one who is so particular about names. I'm almost a little superstitious about them. Well, superstitious wouldn't really be the right word. I can't help but think of the meaning, is all--and the origin, and the sound of the whole name and the initials, etc. And then, of course, there's no accounting for taste. I am a fan of traditional names, and Brian leans more to unusual names. This is why our kids have traditional first names and less traditional middle names. Our thinking was that if they ever start to hate their boring first names, they can always start going by their funky middle names. Another way to see it is that we (I) are (am) not brave enough to give them a truly different name as a first name.
Anyway, there is obviously a lot more for me to write in order to get up to date on things around here--a birth story, for example... But this is what I've got for now.
