August Baby

The crickets are making their August sounds, and the goldenrod chokes the ditches, and the people that have lived here much longer than I have are making their annual and autumnal protests against the death of summer. I never enjoyed the month of August until I moved to Bancroft where it became the beginning of my favorite time of year. Now I have a new beautiful reason to appreciate this month.

I was perturbed when I realized that the child that I had persisted in thinking of as a July baby was going to be an August baby instead. Not only does everything from canning to huge church events to all the last minute summer work and fun try to happen in August, but so many babies are born in August right in the middle of everything. Privately I always thought it absurd. I also thought it avoidable. And here we are.

This is Sasha Paige, our second daughter born on August 3rd, and we love her awfully much.

She is now over three weeks old, and we are convinced that she is extraordinarily alert and strong for her age. (Doesn’t everyone say that about newborns?) I have also established it as fact that she both yells and smiles more than her sister did at this age. Today we named her our drama queen.

You notice we didn’t name her Summer although lots of people predicted that we would.

Before Sasha was born, two of my brothers-in-law had a conversation with me about naming our second child.

One of them said, “Don’t name it after any rocks.” For instance, Rock, I suppose. Or perhaps Mica.

The other one fixed an eyebrow at me and said, “If you name this baby something I can’t pronounce, I’m gonna call it Rex.”

Forthwith, I am pleased to announce that her daddy picked Sasha’s name. Charles made a unanimous decision with himself to name her Sasha while I wiggled on the edge of commitment and hoped for a boy. (We never have trouble picking boys’ names, but we keep having daughters.) Now I love her name, and I love it that Charles named her.

About our naming philosophy— we mostly pick out names that we like. Then I go scurrying around behind the scenes looking for reasons to explain our choice because we have the misfortune to belong to an intentional generation who cares about meaningful names. Charles doesn’t give a hoot, but I feel the environmental pressure. This is typical of every single decision we make.

After we named Winter for a season for precisely the reason outlined above, some people asked why. Perhaps it was a legitimate question.

“Because she was born in the middle of a snowstorm,” I used to say. She was born in the middle of a snowstorm.

“Oh.”

Then… “Did you know she was going to be born in a snowstorm?”

Not being great at predicting either snowstorms or the advent of labor, we did not.

Also, in case anyone wonders, Winter means “the season named winter.” The question has been asked.

Sasha means “defender of mankind” and is actually a Russian name, I understand, short for Alexander and usually used for boys in Eastern Europe. When the west adopted it, it became mostly feminine and is sometimes considered a nickname for Natasha.

Accordingly, we can say that Sasha is loosely named after my sister Natasha, and even more loosely named after Charles’s little brother Alex. Tasha noticed the compliment immediately, but I had to explain it to Alex.

We pronounce Sasha with a short a sound, not a short o sound, but probably won’t notice if you say it the other way once in awhile. We’re not picky about it.

Just a few pictures of this much documented stage.

So my life has been distilled down to babies once again. I feed people and put them to sleep all day long. Oh, and change diapers. I don’t mind. A few days and we’ll all be old. It seems impossible, but someday I’ll probably even forget how many ounces Sasha gained in her first weeks and whether it was two or three times a night that I was up with her.

August has come and with it a baby, and now August is almost gone. Sasha is here to stay.