Blessing the girls

Charlotte and Lydia were blessed on Sunday. It was amazing to hear my husband bless my babies. For so many years it has been someone else's turn and finally it was mine. Everything about the day went exactly how I hoped. The girls were quiet during both blessings, they didn't spit up on their dresses, we got two family pictures, and we had a very nice after party at our apartment.

The girls were still a little bit to0 small for their dress so I put their sleepers on under the dresses. That way I also knew the girls were warm.

Here is our little family.

My sisters warned me that the day they blessed their babies was more stressful than they anticipated so I planned really well to avoid stress. Here are some of the things I did.

1. I waited a few months to have the babies blessed. I think it is crazy that so many people bless their babies in the first six weeks. I mean it's hard enough to adjust to your new life without trying to clean your house and host a luncheon for all your relatives.
2. I delegated. I asked Brandon's parent's to come over an hour and a half before the blessing to help with the girls while I got ready (Brandon was at the church for PEC meeting.) And I asked my parents to stay after the party to help clean up.
3. I cleaned throughout the week. The apartment was clean by Friday night. I went to my parent's on Saturday to avoid creating any new messes.
4. I knew my limits. There was no way my apartment could fit everyone for a luncheon. And there was no way I could put one together on top of cleaning and sewing the dresses. So we just had cookies, a veggie tray, and birthday cake. No one traveled that far to see us so I didn't feel like I needed to feed anyone a huge meal.

This is the birthday cake that Brandon made for me. I love how it looks like a donut. The frosting was a lucky result of mixing powdered sugar with sweetened-condensed milk. (We didn't have any real frosting)
Here I am demonstrating how the dresses looked while the girls were blessed. I loved that the tulle puffed up all around the girls.
One nice thing about hosting the party at our apartment was that I finally organised the girls stuff. Here is how their room looks now. Notice the flight jackets and the airplane.
The girls now sleep in their crib.
And here I am on my birthday which was the next day. I am 26 now. I had a good birthday. The girls gave me exactly what I wanted - Smiles!
For those of you still reading here is how we came up with the girls names.

Charlotte has always been one of my favorite names, but it never was my top choice. As soon as I started suspecting I was pregnant I suddenly LOVED the name. Once I knew for sure that I was pregnant Brandon and I decided that if the baby was a girl we would probably name her Charlotte. Brandon has always liked the name Skye and long ago we decided to use it as a middle name for our first daughter. So we basically had our baby named – easy enough as long as it was a girl.

Then we discover that there were two babies. And we had to start thinking of what kind of twin names we wanted to do. Did we want them to rhyme, start with the same letter, be different, etc. Before we could come up with anything we went though the whole bizarre miscarriage-like experience. Then 6 weeks later we were back to trying to figure out what we should name the babies. By this point we knew they were both girls.

We joked around with the idea of Charlotte and Scarlett, but that idea didn't stick. Then one day I noticed that since our last name started with an I we could do the initials as roman numerals. For example my initials are VI which is 6. Brandon and I were walking to church and discussing names that started with C, I, L, M, and X. I said, “What L names do we like? Hum . . . . Lydia.” Brandon perked up because he loves the name Lydia. We didn't consider it a possible name because my brother long ago put dibs on it. Just to try the name I said, “Charlotte and Lydia.” As soon as I said the names together I KNEW that those were the names. We figured my brother's dibs didn't count since he wasn't married yet. Besides he was on his mission. What could he do about us “stealing” his name?

And then we were left with finding a middle name that not only went with Lydia but also went with Charlotte and Skye. For me it was important to get the balance between syllables and letters right. Charlotte has many letters, and only two syllables. Skye has a few letters and one syllable. Lydia has only a few letters, but is three syllables. To balance the names I felt we needed a middle name that had several letters and only one syllable.

One night we were walking down Bountiful's Main Street. Just for fun we started trying out the names of everything we passed. We tried Marie when we passed Marie Calender's, we tried Zion when we passed Zion's Bank, we tried Mercury when a Ford Mercury drove by, and so on. At the end of the road we saw Brook's Fabrics. I didn't think I would like Brook for a middle name because it had never been a name that stood out to me before. However, there was something about Lydia Brook that made me think. The two names went well together. Brook also fit the requirement of having many letters but only one syllable. So Brook became the final name. We added an “e” to the end so Skye and Brooke would match. Most twins have matching first letters, ours have matching end letters.

We discovered some interesting connections between the names after we decided on them. I have ancestors named Charlotte and Lydia. Both names are also characters in Pride and Prejudice (though I don't think they make the best role models. One gets married because she doesn't want to be an old maid and the other elopes at 16)

The funniest connection is to a joke my family made up the year before. My sister Lindsey named her son Rocklond and so we figured that Rock equaled Earth. My sister Emily's boy is named Asher and so we said Ash equaled Fire. My mom told me I should have a daughter and name her Breezy or something like that so she could have Earth Wind and Fire as grandkids. Well without thinking I named one daughter Skye which equals Wind and my other daughter Brooke which equals Water. One of these days we will have to give rings to all the cousins so they can play Captain Planet together. (I guess we will also have to explain Captain Planet to them)