A Lily by any other name

We needed to come up with a name for our baby. Tony and I talked about her constantly and tired quickly of saying “our little girl” or “our baby”, etc. Of course, we knew in China that our little one would already have been given a name but we have no idea what it is. So we started brainstorming.

I definitely wanted Katherine to be part of her name. My grandmother’s (my Dad’s mom) name was Katherine. My granny, as I liked to call her, was an incredible woman. She was a kind, loving, strong, brave, generous, beautiful woman who had a profound impact on my life. Two of my nieces have Katherine as part of their names, too. Obviously, our grandmother was someone special.

Tony and I discussed different ideas for a first name and agreed on the name Anna. Anna Katherine. Hmm…quite beautiful we thought. However, that was before the dream.

If you haven’t figured it out by now I'm a little strange….ok, a lot strange. Anyway, one night I had a dream about our daughter. I dreamed that Tony was giving our little one a ride on his shoulders. I could see her perfectly. She had on a little yellow seersucker sundress, white birdcage sandals, and her hair was up in pigtails. Her little hands were on Daddy’s face and pretty much covering both of his eyes. In my dream I said, “You’d better move your hands Little Miss or Daddy wont be able to see where he's going.” Without skipping a beat she responded, “My name is not Little Miss. My name is Lily Katherine.” (Is it me or do you think she already has her mother's attitude?) The funny thing was Lily wasn’t even a name we had ever discussed or even thought about.

When I woke up I told Tony all about my dream. Poor Tony is no stranger to hearing about my dreams so he listened intently and then said, “Maybe our little girl is trying to tell us something.”

I know, I know, that’s strange enough but it gets even stranger. At this point Tony and I hadn’t shared our adoption plans with anyone. When we decided to let our families in on our plans I told my sister, Patti. The first thing Patti said was, “Oh, how wonderful! I can just see you with a little girl named Lily!” I couldn’t believe what I had heard! I had goose bumps from head to toe. At first I thought Tony must of told Patti…I mean how else could she have known?? But he hadn’t. Patti said it just came out of her mouth without really thinking about it. Needless to say, that sealed the deal. From that point forward we knew her name had to be Lily Katherine.

When we learn what her Chinese name is we will include that as a second middle name.

As I'm sure most of you know Tony and I have different last names so you may be wondering what Lily's last name will be. Well, Tony and I reached a compromise and have decided to hyphenate Lily's last name. Lily Katherine Wet-Bird. Has a nice ring to it....don't you think? Don't worry. I'm teasing...Lily will have her dad's last name just like I have mine.

Where to begin....

So, those of you who know me well are probably still scratching your heads. TJ's going to be a mom. Who would have ever thought you'd see TJ and mom in the same sentence?? I can assure you I was as surprised as anyone when I started to see my life differently.

When Tony and I got married I made it crystal clear I had no desire to have children. Quite frankly, I beat the subject to death. I just wanted to make sure Tony knew what he was getting into. Little did Tony know that Miss "I love kids but I dont want one" would later become Miss "I love kids and why can't we bring Lily home right now". At first Tony was shocked when I brought up the subject of becoming parents...and then he was thrilled!

You know the saying - opposites attract. That certainly applies to me and Tony. When we started talking about adoption 1,000 things went through my head and not one of them was related to finances. Tony on the other hand began crunching numbers. My brain would be going on all these strange tangents and Tony would be in the office trying to figure out how we could fund Lily's college education and our retirement at the same time. Believe me, I'm not trying to say that my thought patterns are at all normal. To be honest, after some of the things I told our Social Worker during our Home Study I'm surprised we were cleared to become parents. If you could've been a fly on the wall during one of Tony and my dinner conversations this is what you would've heard...

"Oh, I don't want Lily to be one of those kids who looks like she has older parents. You know....remember the kids you went to school with and you could just tell their parents were old enough to be their grandparents. Promise you'll stop me if I try to send Lily to middle school in a tartan plaid dress and Mary Janes. Ok?"

"My God TJ, you think too much. Your brain needs an off switch. I was wondering...do you think Lily will want to go to a college in Maryland or out of state? Because if we fund a pre-paid college trust...."

You get the picture.

Anyway, we took the plunge and submitted our paperwork (aka dossier) to China in September 2005. Since then we've been not so patiently waiting to bring Lily home. So why start a blog now? Honestly, I'm not sure. Since we're almost a year into what we thought would be a 6 month wait I guess there are worse things I could've started!