A name for Baby G #2

Since it took five days after Lauren's birth to decide on a name for her, we didn't really focus on choosing a name ahead of time for this baby. We casually talked about names a few times during the last month or so of my pregnancy, but figured it would probably take us several days to name the baby after it was born anyway so no need concern ourselves about it too much beforehand.

Well, we definitely didn't think that it would take us even longer to name this baby than it had taken us with Lauren! A whole nine days after Baby G #2 was born - after waffling between the three girls names we could kind of agree on - we finally decided on one. So, without further ado, we'd like to introduce to all of you...

Camden Reese

Meaning of the names:

Camden: Enclosed or winding valley (English/Scottish origins).

Reese: Ardent, fiery (English/Welsh origins).

Lauren's first steps

When Lauren and I traveled to BC this summer to visit my parents, Jonathan really hoped Lauren wouldn't start walking until we returned home. She had been pulling up on furniture and walking herself along it for a few weeks by then, and we imagined she might start standing soon and then walking not too long after.

But Lauren seems to be a girl who does things her own way in her own time. She took her time starting to roll, army crawl, and crawl on all fours, and she seemed to feel the same way about walking. She's really enjoyed this phase of pulling up to stand using furniture, walls, cabinets, and legs, and walking along holding on to objects, and didn't seem to be too interested in exploring further transportation methods. I've been trying to follow the RIE approach in regards to physical development, and have given Lauren opportunities to practice her gross motor skills but let her take the lead in what she's comfortable doing. It's been really beautiful to watch her grow and progress on her own terms. I haven't minded at all that she hasn't been an early or even an on-time walker. I know that life will change drastically with a walking baby and I was more than happy to postpone that new stage for several extra months.

A few weeks ago, Lauren started to let go of objects and stand alone for a few short seconds. Slowly, she's built up her balance to stand for longer amounts of time and has become much steadier on her feet. Soon she was standing alone in the bathtub (because of course she needs both of her hands to rub shampoo into her hair) and on the soft surface of our bed, which takes some skill.

For the past week or so, I've been periodically setting Lauren out in front of me as I knelt on the floor and asking her if she could walk to me. Until today, she's always fallen to her knees and crawled on over, crawling being the obviously faster method. But today, when I decided to try it again, she stood steadily for a few seconds and then took several steps over to me and fell into my arms. Even though I knew it was really close to happening, I was still quite surprised. Then I realized that I should document it and ran to grab my camera so I could show Jonathan in case Lauren didn't feel up to replicating her efforts in the evening once he was home from work. When I asked her to walk to me again, with the camera recording her efforts, she happily obliged and then did so several more times throughout the afternoon. And thankfully, Lauren was happy to show Dada her new skill this evening!

We can say with certainty that our girl is truly a toddler now!

Baby FAQs

Our photo announcement on Facebook was lacking in baby info, and many commenters asked questions, wanting more details. This post will answer some of those questions, as well as a few other details we thought we'd share.

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Q. When are you due?
A. The baby is expected in mid-July. I hesitate to share an exact date because, as we all know, babies do not care about exact dates, and I am not really all that interested either. Mid-July seems a perfectly fine estimate, in my opinion, and I am doing my best to think about that time frame rather than any specific date.

Q. How far along are you? (similar to the question above)
A. I was 14 weeks on Monday (when we shared the news).

Q. How are you feeling?
A. Pretty good. Had a little bit of morning sickness (and for me it was pretty much only feeling sick in the morning) from about weeks 8-10, but usually once I ate something I was fine for the rest of the day. I was fearing feeling much sicker, so I was very pleasantly surprised that it wasn't worse this time around.

Q. When do you find out if the baby is a boy or a girl?
A. Short answer: We'll find out when the baby is born.
Long answer: Jonathan doesn't really mind either way, but I have a definite opinion. Since I was a teenager, I always knew that I wanted the sex of my children to be a surprise until I met them in person. My mum, sister, and I enjoyed watching TLC's A Baby Story during vacations, and I can remember when people on the show first started being able to find out the sex of their baby. We all agreed that it would be more fun not to know until the baby arrived. These days in North America it seems standard to know ahead of time and almost strange not to find out, so I know I'm in the minority on this decision, but my reasons are as follows:
1) Millions of women around the world do not have the privilege to know ahead of time if their baby is a girl or a boy, so why should I deserve it? (I know this could be taken way out of context, so I'll just mention that although millions of women around the world do not have access to a lot of other western necessities and conveniences, I am not taking this philosophy that far. I will follow most routine western prenatal practices, but have no concerns about waiving unnecessary conveniences, like finding out the sex of the baby.)
2) We don't want a bunch of gender-specific items, especially the larger scale ones that we'll want to use for multiple children. One of the best ways to avoid that is to simply not find out what we're having ahead of time.
3) I know it's always a surprise, whether you find out during your pregnancy or at the birth, but I just can't imagine giving up that fun surprise factor of being able to find out for myself whether my baby is a girl or a boy.
Of course there is at least one drawback to not knowing ahead of time: We'll have to try to have at least one boy name and one girl name prepared ahead of time. For us that will probably be a challenge, since we barely agree on any names so far, but compared to all the pros, that is a negligible con, at least in my opinion.

Q. Are you going to announce the name before the baby's born?
A. No, probably not even to family members. The reasons for this are:
1) We might not even have concrete name ideas until very close to the baby's birth.
2) We think it'd be a good idea to see our baby first before attaching a name to him/her. I've heard plenty of stories about parents who had a name all picked out for their baby and upon meeting him/her, realized that the infant looked nothing like the name and had to hastily pick out a different one. Agreeing to see the baby first eliminates this possibility.
3) Honestly, I'm just not very comfortable with the thought of sharing names before the baby is born. Almost everyone has very strong opinions on names, and often times aren't afraid to share them. But once there is an actual baby to go along with the name, people usually enjoy the baby so much that the name, even if it isn't a favourite for that particular person, is graciously accepted and opinions are kept to a minimum. And of course, there are always those instances (though probably few and far between) where someone hears the name you have chosen for your baby and picks it just ahead of you... We don't think anyone we know would do that, but it's still something to consider.

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Those are all the questions we could think of to answer, but if you want to know something else, just ask us in the comments and we'll do our best to let you know! :)

Grandparents' announcement

We had fun readying our official baby announcement, but before we shared that one, we prepared a different announcement, one that was equally as fun to get ready and to share.

I had the idea for this grandparents' announcement a long time before we were even considering getting pregnant. I can't remember when I thought it up, but it was probably at least a year or more ago... :)

Trying to explain the idea to Jonathan was a little bit difficult and I tried to find a similar example online, but to no avail. It seems that either no one has thought of this idea before, or that if they did, they didn't post any photos of it on the Internet (and yes, I looked on Pinterest, too). Eventually, I explained it well enough to get Jonathan's okay, and started designing the card.

The week before my brother and sister-in-law, Tyler and Amanda, left to visit my parents over Christmas, we used the half-designed card as the way to tell them about the baby. "I need help designing this card for Christmas and I want both of your opinions on it," I claimed. It took them a few times reading the card through before they caught on, but then it was fun to talk to them about the pregnancy, the idea for the card, and how I could change things around to make it look better. Amanda is a great designer and gave me some help picking better fonts. As soon as I changed the fonts, the card looked so much better, and I started liking it more and more. Amanda also helped me find a baby-themed graphic font to use as pops of colour, and I loved how that version looked, but in the end, Jonathan and I decided to use a Christmas-themed graphic font instead so the riddle wasn't solved too quickly. Looking back, that might not have been the best idea...

Before Tyler and Amanda left for BC, we used the more-finished-but-not-totally-complete card to share with my sister and her husband, Bryn and Josh. The four of us in Maine Skyped with them and then I asked them to look at a card I was going to give Mum and Dad for Christmas. It took them a little bit to understand, but they soon did and we had fun sharing the news with them, too, before they left to spend Christmas with Josh's family in Ohio.

Jonathan and I spent Christmas vacation with his family, and on Christmas morning, after all the other presents were opened, we sat Jonathan's parents down on the same couch and gave them an envelope to open. It took them a little while of guessing before Jonathan's mom asked, "Are you pregnant?!" and then a cacophony broke out! Although I don't usually enjoy being the center of attention, this time it was fun, and we loved finally telling Jonathan's family and answering their questions.

An hour or two later, Tyler texted us that now was a good time to Skype my parents. We had a few technical difficulties, but finally connected with them. After some minutes of chatting about how their Christmas was going so far, my Dad opened his name gift from me, and then we told them we also had a card to give them, and Tyler handed them the envelope. They opened it and pondered the card for few seconds before my Mum said, "Ohhhh!" and then popped her hand over her mouth so as not to ruin the surprise for my Dad. He couldn't figure the card out, though, and said, "I don't understand." After letting him wonder for a little longer, my Mum finally leaned over and whispered a hint into his ear. His first response after understanding the card was, "Well, it better be July 20!" (which is his birthday). Then we happily answered their questions and talked some more before ending the call to go eat Christmas dinner with Jonathan's family.

We thoroughly loved sharing our news in this way, and I am still so in love with how the card turned out! Many thanks to Amanda and Tyler for their help and design ideas!! It definitely wouldn't have turned out as cute without their assistance.

Help Needed card

Ali's parents' choices

My parents are already grandparents and have well-established grandparent names that my nephew and niece use, so it was easy for them to fill in their card. We'll add a photo of Jonathan's parents' choices when they make them. Can't wait to find out what they decide!

Baby announcement

Jonathan and I have been discussing baby names since before we were engaged. I don't remember how we started talking about it the first time, but I believe it might have come up sometime during the drive from Southern Adventist University to British Columbia after our university graduation in May 2010. Jonathan came along with my family to help us drive our vehicles back home (we had a caravan of my parents' truck and fifth-wheel, my car, and my sister's car). Since that time we've known that we do not agree on names. My Mum, my sister, or I would suggest something (we three all have pretty similar taste in names) and Jonathan would immediately let us know his dislike of that suggestion. When Jonathan visited me in Tanzania in January 2011 when we got engaged, we tried talking about the subject again. We made no headway that time either. And every so often during our three and a half years of marriage so far I'll bring up the subject of baby names or suggest one, and we'll realize anew how different our opinions are.

Pretty early on in our marriage the idea of using baby name books as a baby announcement came to me. It just seemed like a natural concept to use since I knew it would probably take us our entire pregnancy (and then some??) to come up with names we agreed on. And having a few baby name books on hand to browse through definitely couldn't hurt either!

So, without further ado, our official baby announcement photo.

Jonathan's FB caption: The name of our game

Ali's FB caption: Our new reading material

New baby, New blog

We're having a baby! We found out for sure in mid-to-late November (we waited a week after our first positive pregnancy test to take another one) when I was six weeks pregnant. We're super happy and excited, and can't wait for July to arrive!

Since finding out about our addition, we've done a lot of thinking and talking about our baby and how we wanted to share this new life journey and family transformation with our family and friends. We don't want to bombard e-mail inboxes with tons of information, and we don't really want to put everything on Facebook either (especially since some of our family and friends don't use it). Eventually we decided that the best way would be a blog, where we'll post baby and family updates for anyone who is interested to read. We thought about using my blog for this purpose, and for awhile we contemplated making a new blog, but neither idea seemed quite right. We both wanted to be able to write on the blog, so just using my blog wouldn't work for that, and we thought that having two joint blogs - our travel blog plus a new family blog - would be too confusing and tedious. So we finally decided to just use our travel blog and write both travel posts and family life posts on here. (Besides, any future travel we do will most likely include our family anyway.) Plus, this blog is called JAG Journeys, and this is surely an exciting journey that we've just embarked on!

If you're here, welcome! Feel free to look around, read the posts we have up so far, and, if you haven't already, make sure to save the URL somewhere so you can come back and check in every so often for updates.
This is going to be one fun new adventure!

- Ali & Jonathan