An Autumnal Christmas

I am going to be completely honest here. I WANT desperately to be the person starts Christmas shopping every year in August. I want to spend lots of time considering and searching for the perfect gift for each and every person on my list. Unfortunately, this usually doesn't happen. Summer is just so... hot. You can't think about Christmas time then! Then fall comes and there's football all Saturday that hinders me from hitting the malls and shops.

But this year is different. With the girls coming at the end of October/beginning of November, and the adventure that will follow, I don't imagine I'll be doing a lot of mall walking in November and December. So I have badgered our friends and family and I have gotten gift ideas from almost everyone on our current list (by almost, I'm calling out Greg and Blair!). We still have to wait for the name drawing at Thanksgiving for both sides of my family, but still, I'm excited about getting such an early start.

In this spirit, I want to showcase two sites that I have loved using the past few weeks when searching for gift giving inspiration. Of course there are the usual suspects: amazon.com for everything and etsy for the cute, artsy, homemade options. Both of these are great sites, but honestly, I get incredibly overwhelmed and rarely find items that I didn't go looking for. The newest site I found just today through another blog is Kate's Paperie. This site not only has beautiful stationary and paper products, but also just some fun stocking stuffers. The site has a "gift giving" tab that gives 7 categories of gift recipients to help focus your search. Another more eclectic site is Uncommon Goods . "Eclectic" does not even touch the massive variety you can find there. Just go.

How is your Christmas shopping going? Have you at least made your own list?

StarSearch: Pediatricians

I am on the quest for the perfect pediatrician. Today was my first step into the world, and I'm a bit excited. I have 2 meet and greets scheduled with two doctors at two different practices. Both are within 10 miles of the new house in Delaware, which is exciting, but neither have privileges at our delivering hospital. What does this mean? It means that they won't meet the babies until they're about a week old and the random pediatric person at St. Ann's will be the one checking and discharging the babies. Not a big deal to me, really, b/c I'd rather have the pediatrician(s) close by for the next few years than have one for the (hopefully) short hospital stay.

I have a fun list of questions for the meet and greets. Any input on the questions is wholly welcome!

1. Are you willing to support us with an alternate vaccination schedule?

2. Are you "twin friendly?" Meaning: will you do joint well visits? or at least make an attempt to schedule back-to-back appointments?

3. Do you have separate waiting rooms for well patients v. sick ones?

4. How likely are we to get same-day sick appointments? By what time of day do I need to call to get a same-day appointment?

5. Do the doctors in this practice rotate, or will we always see you for the well visits? (I realize sick visits are an entirely different animal)

6. What are your after-hours/weekend procedures? Are there charges for calling after hours?

7. How does this practice handle doctor vacations? Do you stagger them? What do you do around major holidays?

Now it really feels like we're in the home stretch! Dealing with the hospital post-birth plan (I don't really have a birth plan b/c there's no telling what's happening with twins. My OB at least knows I want as little intervention as possible), finding pediatricians, and getting excited to get the nursery established in the new house is making it all set in!

Neave is the Emily of 2015

We've gotten a bit of flack from various people about our name choice for Baby B. Ever since I went to Ireland in 2008, I've loved the name Niamh (pronounced Neave; rhymes with leave and weave) and Scott has, too. Long story short, when I visited a school outside of Dublin, I encountered a girl named Niamh, and found her name to be original and exciting.

Fast forward to now, and we want to name our 2nd girl the anglicanized version of Niamh. We realize that our daughter's name would never be pronounced correctly using the old Irish spelling, so we settled on the very British way--Neave. We continue to get feedback-- some of it not so nice.

I am proud to announce after some research today that in 2001, Niamh was ranked 6th in baby girl names in Ireland (it's currently ranked 18). To compare, in 2001, the 6th most popular name in the US was Sarah. SARAH. So, just realize that Neave ISN'T weird! It's the Irish equivalent of Sarah.

And we love it.