When it Rains it Pours... Babies

Remember how all my friends seemed to have babies in July? Well there's been a new crop of them in October. My little ones tried to join them it seems but thankfully they decided to cook awhile longer.

First came the daughter of Sean and "Kate Ran" (I have two friends named Kate R. and this is to distinguish them - "Ran" is an abbreviation of her last name). She was born 9/28, but close enough to October to count. Her name is Zada Kathrene Day Smith. Kathrene and Day are the grandmothers' middle names.

Kate Ran and I look like we have the same belly size here on 9/5, but she gave birth at the end of the month. Meanwhile my due date wasn't for 3 more months!

My friend Lila told me the baby's name via Gmail chat and suggested I guess it Lingo style. Lingo is a game show hosted by everyone's favorite Love Connector, Chuck Woolery. You try to guess a word like a sequence of colors in the game Mastermind.

Remember Mastermind? Lingo is like it but with words.

The word they are trying to guess here in this game of Lingo is "balls." If you guess a word with a letter that's in the word and in the correct space you get an orange square. Correct letter but incorrect placement yields a yellow circle.

Lila's only clue was that the name last appeared in the top 1,000 list for popularity in 1880. Here's my sequence of guesses.:
LENA
CORA
VITA
GASA
MAYA
YAYA
PAMA
JAWA
JFDB
HADA
ZADA

(I was getting desperate to rule letters out when I tried the "name" JFDB.)

So yes, the answer was Zada (pronounced "zay-duh"). The name has grown on me a lot from when I thought it rhymed with "sad a." I think it works well with the last name Smith.

For a brief period of time the grandparents thought the name was Zeba because they misheard it on the phone.

My co-worker Julia had her second child, a boy named Dorian, on 10/1. It was her first day of maternity leave and she had him that morning at 11:30 a.m. At least she'll get to use those weeks off after the baby is born.

Here we are face to face... a couple of pregnant ladies. (to the Silver Spoons theme song)
This was taken 9/17, two weeks before Julia gave birth.

And finally, high school friend and wedding bridesmaid Candice and husband Steve (a.k.a. Dataknife) welcomed a daughter on 10/14, the day after I got home from the hospital. Candice went into labor and checked into the hospital on a Monday and give birth to 8 lb, 9 oz. Nora Rosalie on a Wednesday. Candice had one of the worst pregnancies I've heard of with severe nausea and all that accompanies it throughout (not just the first trimester), capped off by a long labor and an unexpected c-section.

This was taken on 9/11 when Candice had just reached 37 weeks - full term. If you look closely you'll notice I'm wearing heels. (I know it's bad but practically all my non-tennis shoes are heels. I looked for something less heel-y to no avail. Now I wear flip flops.)

Rosemary's... er, Candice's baby.