“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;“

–Juliet from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”

We knew we were going to name our daugter edith way back in the first trimester, the name kind of just came to us and we seemed to know it was right.  However, we were totally lost on the middle name. We were so lost that we gave up even thinking about it for a few months.  A few weeks before she was born we were on a walk in the rose garden, and erin put her foot down and said that we had to choose the middle name that day from a rose that was in the garden (the are hundreds of roses). So we set off looking, before we found a middle name though, we found that in 1924 the portland rose queen was named edith.

This inspired us to keep looking. After a long while, and roses named ‘midnight beauty’ and ‘president kennedy’ erin came across an english rose named ’sister elizabeth’, and it just so happens that i have a sister named elizabeth.

It was getting dark and i was getting tired of squinting at signs trying to read their name, so i found the index of all the roses in the park and scanned it for any name we had talked about.  At the very end of the list, I found ‘etoile de holland’; ‘etoile’ means ‘resembling a star’, and erin had really wanted a middle name that had something to do with stars or space because the night we found out we were pregnant we saw the aurora borealis from our backyard.

And there we had our names.

We’re still in the hospital, hopefully we’ll be home tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s a preview of our beautiful baby girl.

Why did this stork peacock* just move into our yard? it sits and taunts the chickens and makes a howling noise that sounds something like a woman screaming combined with a caterwaul and a siren.  our friend juliet thinks that the peacock is the stork of portland, and i think she may be right.

*this is in’t a joke, a peafowl really moved into our yard yesterday, and was even on the news last night. it’s kind of obnoxious, but if it does its duty and brings the baby soon, i’ll forgive it.

We know four couples who were due in the week from July 10th through the 17th. All of them have had their babies except for us! We feel like we’re going to have the baby any day now, I don’t think erin’s belly has much room left, either.

The baby was conceived on a full moon, and we’ve been tracking the pregnancy by following the moon each month. I guess we’ve always though she’d be born on the full moon in July, which is tomorrow. Last night the moon was out in full force, though pictures never show the moon as it looks in reality, here’s a nice approximation.

I don’t think the picure in erin’s last post really does the belly justice, so here are two that do.

Hi all, sorry it’s been so long since I’ve written- especially to Hidie who has been requesting a pick for weeks (months?).  Here, I am, yesterday, 38 weeks.  Baby E is fully baked and can join us anytime.  The doctor mentioned this would be a great week, I agree, but, it’s not up to us!  I’m feeling great, still exercising, although my inclination is to slow down… but, what’s the worst that could happen at this point- I’d go into labor!  Ah…. let’s hope so.  I feel ready, as I can ever really be, of course.  The room is nearly done, just needing some paint.  It’s funny, now that’s it’s almost there, I’ve pretty much given up caring.  But, soon it will be done and I’ll put a photo up as, let’s face it, we’ve put alot of work into it.  So… this pic was taken at the rose garden last night, and while we were walking around I said to Peter, okay, we need to pick the middle name and it needs to be either one of these roses or one of the rose princesses.  We discovered her name is a rose princess (I won’t disclose the year for those of you so curious you’d look it up), and, she’s ending up with not one but two middle names- both the names of roses in the garden.  Phew, that’s done!  And no, not even one of her names is Rose.  Anyways, for those of you still waiting, it seems you don’t have long!  We can’t wait to meet her.