We Have A Winner!

Good morning, readers. I'm pleased to announce that we have conducted our random drawing and the winner of the autographed Jarrah photo is...CHERI! :) Congratulations, Cheri, and please try to contain your excitement: we'll be getting your prize out to you very soon. ;)

I must confess I was deeply gratified to hear from some of you who have never posted before! And to hear that you could relate to my experiences, since of course there are days when I'm convinced that I'm the only one flailing around in Babyland. Turns out the job has a built-in Flail Factor, from what I'm hearing. And that is a great comfort to me, readers.

I also appreciate your creative ideas for "the witching hours" of 4-6 p.m. I can imagine there will now be many days when you'll find me slurping on Chardonnay while twisting to "Rock Around The Clock." Getting out of the house is genius, too. Either she falls asleep and I sneak in some reading, or she doesn't but is distracted while I grocery shop, etc. You guys are good!

Here's a new contest: help me think of a title for "The Book," should it ever come to fruition. Originally, I thought of What To Expect When You're Still Not Expecting, but it doesn't seem quite right anymore. Mary had a fun one: From Here to Maternity. HA! Mary is awesome at titles. She says it's a special skill from a kindergarten teacher's magic box of tricks. Cast your vote today! :)

I wanted to take a moment to address a question that arose in your posts: the story of Jarrah's name. For the record, it's pronounced like "Sarah." Not like the feminine of "Jar." ;) At first I experienced a high level of dismay when I heard people saying it like that, but then I remembered that I have one of the top 10 names for girls myself and not a day goes by when someone doesn't ask me to spell it. They want me to spell "Samantha," readers! While the name is long, it is efficient and economical with its letters: none superfluous, all functional. This is not true of "Jarrah," which doesn't really need that "h" or that extra "r," but is in structure very much like "Hannah." Or, if you are the gambling type, "Harrah's."

By now you might be thinking that we are being awfully persnickety about the pronunciation of some made-up, random word with which we decided to burden our only child, but never fear, if you were Australian, you wouldn't feel that way. (In general, probably fewer things would bother you if you were Australian, but we can't all be that lucky, can we? There are precious few of them; the country is practically deserted!) "Jarrah" is a kind of tree (or is it more accurate to say a kind of wood?) in Western Australia (where David is from) in the eucalyptus family, and a beautiful, deep red in color when observed in furniture (such as the gorgeous stuff created by my father-in-law) or, in this country, view decks installed by homeowners who know something about really good-looking imported wood.

And why did we name our daughter after a tree, you may ask? No other reason than we liked the sound of it. I liked it the first time I heard it (probably while admiring some of aforementioned father-in-law's work) but I've recently learned that David has fantasized about a child named Jarrah since before he even thought he'd have children, if that makes sense. So really I was just a cog in his cunning plan. David (being named David, after all) is not a fan of the outlandish monikers I was wont to suggest (I did like the idea of naming a girl "July" at one point) and I was never going to agree to something that was already in the top 10 (having spent the past decade of my life reaching for a box of cereal at the supermarket only to hear "Samantha! Put that down right now!" and guiltily dropping it, only to realize that the Samantha in question is actually five and standing behind me attempting to siphon off juice boxes) so amazingly, Jarrah was the only name we could agree on.

And Rose, her middle name, is for my great-grandmother on my mother's side. And because I think it's pretty. And because I like single-syllable names for middle names. So there.