So Derek updated facebook but not the blog…Janie is here. Hope you all are our facebook friends and saw the news there… It took us a while to tell people because we had not decided on the girl name before coming to the hospital! It took us an hour or two of looking at her and trying out our four remaining options before we made the decision and called people.
Jane Churchill has been my top choice for the whole pregnancy. I love the name Jane because of the rich meaning: “God is gracious.” I had to remind myself of that a lot these past nine months. I hate being pregnant, and this was my worst time yet. But God graciously brought me the help I needed along the way and gave us a healthy little daughter at the end of it. I also love the literary and historical associations with the name, particularly Jane Austen, of course! It would be delightful to have our daughter be as witty and vivacious as my favorite writer. I have a family friend named Jane who has a similarly delightful sense of humor, so the name has always been an attractive one for me. We’ll probably be calling her Janie a lot as a nickname (you know how we are about nicknames ending in a long-E sound)–while rereading Eleanor Estes’ Moffats series with Tommy this fall, I just fell in love with the nickname all over again. (If you haven’t read The Middle Moffat recently, you really should. Jane is really one of my favorite little girls of classic children’s lit.)
Churchill is my middle name, and it was my Grandma Willett’s maiden name. I’ve always loved how English it is, and it’s always fun to tell people that we are (distantly) related to Winston Churchill. We were married in an English church designed by Christopher Wren, destroyed in the Battle of Britain, and rebuilt in Fulton, MO, where Churchill made his famous Iron Curtain speech. I like to think that Janie’s and my middle name stands for courage and conviction in adversity. I’m all for celebrating our English roots!
Congrats! She looks perfect.
She looks a lot like Lizzie!
Yep, as soon as I saw that photo I said, “That’s Elizabeth!”
And speaking of names, by now Derek’s done enough of the family tree to know that my Uncle Bob’s wife was . . . Jane Muller!
Congratulations!! I can’t wait to meet her next month!
I don’t think I realized we got married in the same church!! I’m so glad all went well with the delivary. We are still contemplating a boys name, somehow we have no trouble coming up with girls names!! Congratulations again and I hope you are all doing well.