Tal just tried to stick a chew toy in my mouth. I’ve reached my limit on baby slobber for the day though so I took a pass. And now that I reread that sentence I’m fairly certain that chew toy is not the right term. Teething toy is. They are both equally gross, teething toys just don’t smell like bacon. Sidenote: Etsy store idea.

Getting to know a baby you’ve only loved in pictures is amazing. Beautiful. Daunting. I’ll blog about our meeting another day, it was wonderful and more than I had hoped for but I have to let intimate memories like that work themselves deep down into my heart before I can share them. In the meantime, he has a name. Four of them actually. Because we aim to make kindergarten as difficult as possible for our children.

His first name is one we’ve loved forever. And when we first began receiving update pictures it’s the name we each thought of but tried very hard to push down emotionally since we don’t like to get too attached to a name until they are in our arms in that “forever starts now” moment. We tried out a bunch of other names during the process but a few weeks before he came home I brought it up again and this time we just knew. That was it. And then we met him, and it still seemed perfect so there it was.

Naming children is a wee bit stressful to me on account of my commitment issues. And then I found out how cheap it is to change your name which made me feel infinitely better. At around age eighteen we’ll give our children the option of telling us they hate their names and having us pay for the court fees to change it to something they like better. Unless they want something like Dracula in which case they better hope they make good money at their after school job because that’s not happening on my dime.

Tal’s second name is his given Congolese name, the name of a royal from Congo’s past. We’ve been referring to “his royal demands” on account of that. And because he has this cute little cry when he wants something that isn’t so much a cry as it is an indignant protestation on the treatment he is receiving from those who really should be able to make a bottle faster than that. We call both our children by their Congolese names quite often (about 50% of the time around home if you count the nicknames based on them as well) because they’re a beautiful part of their history, their story, their heritage. And because they totally rock. I often think of them as having two first names. Their “American” one, and their Congolese one.

Tal’s third name is Phoenix. Rising from the ashes. A picture of Christ. New beginnings. Strength. This name is a prayer, a wish, a destiny. This name makes me cry because I look at him and it’s what I see in him. Something powerful and regal. Phoenix rising.

And last of course is our family name. Thank goodness I didn’t hyphenate it with mine when we got married huh?