Gwendolyn's naming ceremony was yesterday, and went beautifully, so I
thought I'd post a quick update.

My sister and her dh showed up Friday night, and since we still hadn't
finalized a name, they helped us out. We finally settled on Ganit
B'rina. I especially liked how B'rina matched both first letter and
meaning for Beatrice - Beatrice means Bringer of Joy, and B'rina is
With joy.

We spent Saturday morning getting everything ready. The only thing we
cooked was a noodle kugel (tag team with my sister) but we had to
finish getting the houseready and setting out all of the food.
(bagels & lox, cheese & crackers, veggies & dip, drinks, etc). We
weren't sure exactly how many to expect since there were a few maybes,
but we knew it would be 25-35 people. As it turned out, it was 36!

The ceremony itself went beautifully. Dh & I did it (I mainly led
it), with a ceremony we based on a couple of ceremonies in The New
Jewish Baby Book. The grandparents all did short readings, and my
sister introduced her name. (I figured it was appropriate since she
helped us decide!) We got a lot of compliments on the ceremony. My
mom really liked having it at our house because it was so much more
personal than if it was just tucked into a regular service.

DD was a perfect angel during her ceremony, since she was asleep and I
was holding her. g Ds got restless, so I held him for part of it.
(He was feeling a bit neglected since we had been so busy getting
things ready.)

It was wonderful to see my extended family, and my garden even did me
a favor and my blue flax opened up! (Something was blooming besides
dandelions - yay!) We did have a bit of excitement - ds (2.75) was
playing with my cousin's 13 yr old, and accidentally hit him with a
block on the head, really hard. Fortunately, I still had a couple
of the ice packs from the hospital, so he got to use one of them.
Other than that, and ds sweet-talking people into letting him have
soda, it went very well!

Irene
mom to Thomas Alexander (Tivon Alexander) 7/01
& Gwendolyn Beatrice (Ganit B'rina) 4/8/04