Grand Introduction

Ladies and Gentlemen,

With great pleasure and delight, may I present to you,

Miss Myra Ines Foong Zhi Xin,
Born on 16th July 2010,
3.6kg and 51 cm long.




Myra in her first week:






Myra in phototherapy



Myra being sunbathed for her prolonged Jaundice



Myra in her Fullmoon Day outfit


Myra with her brothers on her Fullmoon Day



Myra at 6 weeks


She is Myra Ines Foong Zhi Xin.
Myra, the female of Myron, means fragrance (derived from myrrh),
Ines means pure and innocence in Latin,
Zhi is a plant with medicinal value, and
Xin means joy.

We pray that as she bears all these values in her name, she will be a channel of God's blessing to the people around her.


I thank God how she is so welcomed and adored by her brothers.
I was especially concern about Myron, being still such a baby himself at 16 months, but he really loves her. Every time she cries, he will run to her and want to give her a hug to comfort her. He loves to pat her all the time. Of course at other times, he is curious and would be poking at her face. We constantly have to remind him to be gentle as he gets really excited.

So here is where I'll need to go edit my profile.... again.
:)

What's In A Name

The boys have this Chinese character for their middle name:

梓


It is pronounced as "Zi".

From the Chinese dictionary* there are many meanings to the sound "Zi", like son, wisdom and quite a few I can't remember. Obviously I am not one who can read Chinese. But of the many meaning, the one I chose, is actually the name of a kind of a tree. It is described as a strong tree that can be good for making furniture and such.

Well, a strong tree sounds good. But I really chose it because I like the symbol of a tree.
To me, it signifies

life and growth

(of course I also felt it had a bit more of an artistic bent to it, something of nature and inspirational).

So this "Zi" turns out to be a tree called Catalpa.
My good brother-in-law, the one in Singapore, managed to help me locate what the tree looks like, thanks to Wikipedia.



So, my sons,

grow well,
grow strong.
Be useful in many ways, and
Be inspiring to those around you.




* My former colleague who was leading the Chinese Ministry looked up a dictionary and showed me the whole list. Of course, me with no photographic memory can't recall all on the list except what has struck me.

Choosing A Name

I am already having a headache.
I had thought I had solved this problem, but it's come back...

What name to give to this baby boy?

I have Googled this and I have "chosen" a few names I thought with quite good meaning... but the criteria for me for choosing a name comes as such:

1. Good meaning.
2. Sounds good to the ear.
3. Can be pronounced without a problem by our non English speaking relatives.
4. It has to start with the mighty letter 'M'.

No. 3 is really the hardest criteria to fulfill.

Already, when I look at the quite cool sounding names with good meaning... I can imagine how they will be mispronounced and maybe even be made a joke of because it may sound like something else in Cantonese.

My mom, for one, may not make a joke of a 'strange' name, but I shall not torture her with grandchild whose name she cannot call properly, and have the other grandkids, especially my boys, constantly trying to correct her because she cannot twist her tongue in such a way to pronounce certain sounds.

Sigh...

When we had to choose a name for Max it was hard enough.
So we finally agreed that Maxwell, meaning full in wellness, was a good name. Max sound pretty cool too, and no problem for our non-English speaking relatives, especially my mom.

So ...

Actually, I thought of the name Marq, like Marc/Mark.
(thought of this after we decided on Maxwell, that should we have another boy, this would be it.)
Cool right, with the 'Q' in a name?
Also, it's easy for our non-English speaking relatives...

But ...

We, Gadget-daddy and I, are now not so comfortable with the name.

It's to do with a close friend we have, who stays near by.
His parents also stay near by.
We all go way back into school days, and we are all still very good friends (he is also married and has a son.)
We meet up quite often (a few times a year is pretty good for friend we have since school days),
usually either at his place or ours.

The thing is,...
He and I kinda have a past...
something that didn't quite happen, though it was probably just a whisper away...
(Yes, yes, something sounding like an extract from a teenage romance novel. Hahaha...)
which would require a whole different post to tell that story...
(Please pardon my rambling...)

Anyway...
the point is...

Still no name yet.

Pfffhhhh.