The Naming One week old and all is well. He is slowly settling in, still kind of fussy, but not too bad. He actually SLEPT next to me the last two nights, instead of crying on top of me! Of course, then Kate took over the fussiness and didn't want to sleep from midnight till 2am or so.... Oh well :-) Coming up with a name was really hard this time, we didn't really want to keep calling him Voldemort as a real name, so we did a lot of name book reading this week. After a while we decided that Erik would be the name for him. Spelled as Erik instead of Eric, to show his European heritage. The name fits him. Since it took us so long to come up with a name, and since we didn't bake a birthday cake last week (in the middle of the night), we thought it would be fun to have a small naming ceremony for him today. So this morning, I ground some wheat in my new grain mill, and used my new stand mixer (which I bought for his impending birth) to make a nice devil's food chocolate birthday cake. I kept it very simple, just a two layer cake, with frosting, and his name on top. I am better in lego cakes than in these kind of cakes :-) Then I asked all the kids to make a candle for the baby, so we could light them for the naming ceremony. I had bought beeswax sheets, which make it very very easy to make candles, even for Kate. Cake was ready, candles were ready, so we got the baby (who was with daddy, playing on the computer) and turned off all the lights. We told the kids this symbolized the darkness in the womb, in which baby Erik had spent his time before coming out. Then we started lighting the candles one by one, to symbolize the light and love he is living in now. Every time I lit a candle, I asked that kid to do a wish for the baby. Cees wished that he would make friends easily. Tim wished for him to be rich, as did Tara. Jane and Kate didn't really get the concept yet. Sander wished him a happy life and I wished that he could accomplish whatever he wants in life. Then we named him Erik and sang happy birthday to him, both in English and in Dutch. Followed by devouring the cake, by candle light, while he stared into the candles. The kids talked about how Erik couldn't eat cake yet, and were laughing a lot when I explained that I would eat the cake instead and Erik would have chocolate milk to drink from me! :-) Last week my mother in law was here to help me with the kids, which was great! I didn't do much and was able to rest a lot, very nice! She is back to the Netherlands now, and Sander has taken the next week off. So that's another week in which we can slowly get used to having six kids and in which I even can rest some. Much better than last time, when we had to travel internationally on the tenth day after birth! This is the last installment of my pregnancy journal, I thought the naming would be a good end. But I have started a new journal, called 'The Bunch' as a sequel to this. About the hectic, but fun filled life of a family with 3 sons and 3 daughters :-) Page design by mabear | Send email to Karen | Page last updated: Dec 29, 2001