Samantha Grace is named after my paternal grandmother Sylvia and her sister Goldie. My grandmother and her sister lived together for decades after their husbands died and I thought it was really nice that the two of them would live on in the same person. Unofficially, Samantha is also named after our fertility doctor, Dr. Grace Lee. When doing the transfer during our FET, Dr. Lee jokingly made us promise that if our little frozen embryo was a girl, we would name the girl after her. So we did!
We chose Shayna as Samantha's Hebrew name. It means "beautiful" and we think it's appropriate because Sammy is such a beautiful little baby. And my grandma loved using the word beautiful to describe things. Except she said it as "beaauuu-tiiii-ful".
The rabbi of our local reform temple did a wonderful job with the baby naming ceremony. One of my favorite parts was when my husband and I took two lit candles and together lit another candle to represent Sammy. And Ian was hysterical during this time. He knows that birthday candles are meant to be blown out and so as we were trying to do this part of the ceremony, he kept wanting to blow out the candles. So he would blow it out and we would light it and then he would blow it out. Eventually, we let him blow out all the candles and we didn't re-light them so that we could move on with the ceremony.
I also really loved the blessings that my father, mother-in-law and brother wrote and read. And my sister participated by reading something the rabbi had written. She said that if she had tried to read something she had written, she would have dissolved into tears. And speaking of tears, I was so proud of myself for being able to talk about Sammy's name without crying. My mom reminded me that although she was named after my very loved grandmother who is no longer with us, this is about a happy event and there is no reason to cry. And so I kept that in mind when talking about Sammy.
So overall, it was a great day. After the ceremony, we served a TON of food (as you would expect at a Jewish affair). We had bagels (served with cream cheese, lox, tomatoes and onions), 3-bean salad, noodle kugel, asian-style cole slaw, broccoli pie, tuna salad, egg salad, chicken salad, fruit salad, and a vegetable platter. And my mother-in-law brought her roasted garlic-eggplant salad and her red bean/walnut salad. And my great uncle brought home-made challah. For dessert, we had banana bread, mandel bread, chocolate chip cookies, rugelach and chocolate truffles (brought by my mother-in-law). After this week, I think we've finally finished all of the leftovers.
I'll sign off with some pictures. The first one is the money shot. I can't believe how beautiful my little girl looks. I love her so much.
My sister, me and my brother.
Me and hubby
My brother, Ian and my sister-in-law
My sister and Sammy
My little babies
My mother-in-law and Sammy
Our awesome family of FOUR
Ian and my dad and mom
No comments:
Post a Comment