Archives for January 2010

Sitting all gathered around the kitchen table my brother in law recounts a lesson he learned in his church Marriage and Family class.

A new way looking at life. His instructor emphasized that it is not a situation that effects us, its our reaction to the situation. How we choose to react can change everything.

When someone cuts us off in traffic we are immediately angered. Wonder how they dare to do that to us. Do we ever stop to think that maybe they are on their way to somewhere more important? Do they have a sick child they are hurrying to get to? Are they late for an appointment? Those thoughts never cross our minds. (at least not for most of us.)

Changing the way we react to situations can have a great impact on our daily lives and our happiness.
In one situation, the counselor, spoke about a man who would come home every day to a home that looked like it had be ransacked. Toys, clothes, food, everywhere. He remembered being angry with his wife who was at home during the day. “What had she done all day?” He found himself thinking. After this lesson he made the resolution to change his attitude toward unfavorable situations.

When he arrived home the next day to find the house in the same order he thought to himself, “WOW, my kids had fun today.”

And his whole attitude changed as he looked around at all the projects they had completed throughout the day.

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Since that day I have tried. Tried very hard to change my thinking on the situations in my life I would normally get upset about. It’s not easy. That’s for sure. Instead of automatically jumping to the worst conclusion, I try another route. Sure, instinct has me go there first, but I try to back up and start over again.

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Now as I walk up the stairs for the first time every evening Aaron shouts up from the kitchen “Beebza had lots of fun today.”

And suddenly nothing else matters.

{a VERY mild day}

{Daddy and Beebza deep in thought. New Years Eve 2009}

Boy names never came easily to us. At some point in my pregnancy we had whittled the list to about 16 names. Still no decision could be made.
I invested in a magnetic white board, wrote all of our names on the board and stuck it to the fridge.

We were forced to look at it, forced to pick a name.

Every once in awhile we’d walk past it and cross a name off with our finger. It just didn’t fit anymore.

We sought advise for all corners of the globe. We finally decided on taking 2 names to the hospital with us. Everyone always said “You’ll know when you see him.” or “The perfect name will come to you the minute you lay eyes on your baby.”
We kept our two names a secret.

Miles and Elliot

Both names we loved. We’d wait and see what he “looked like” then choose.
The moment came. When he was born I don’t remember every thinking he looked like one name or another. I was too focused on him. The miracle that was our little boy.
In the hours that followed it was just me, Aaron and our baby. Aaron was holding him walking around the room, not able to take his eyes off of him and I asked him.

“What’s his name?”

“I don’t know” He responded.

It wasn’t as easy and seeing him and picking a name. The perfect name didn’t come to me like so many had said. I was completely ambivalent to the name he had.
I really wanted Aaron to pick his name. I wanted to give him that.

I asked “Is he a Miles or an Elliot?”

He looked at him adoringly and shrugged his shoulders.

We both looked at him and asked him, “Is your name Miles or Elliot?”
I don’t know what we were expecting. For him to perk up when he heard one or the other? We asked a couple more time. Called him both names and waited for a sign.
Surprisingly. He didn’t offer much help.
I was worried because I wanted to make the announcement he was born, but I didn’t want to do it without a name. It was already 2 hours after, we needed to call our families.

“How about Miles?” I asked. Aaron shook his head. And We said “Hi Miles.”
It was perfect. He was perfect.

He is perfect. Perfectly Miles.

**My only regret of that evening was taking so long to come up with a name when in our hearts we always knew it would be Miles.
Everything we have from the hospital says “Baby Boy Eaton”
Like he wasn’t even there. Being born around Christmas they had these adorable crib markers on his little rolling bassinet that should have had his name written in it. But it’s blank. Small thing in the grand scheme of everything that happened that day, but it still makes me sad to see it.

ETA: In intrest of full disclosure, since that day we can count on our fingers the amount of time we have actually called him by his name. The word Miles actually only comes out of our mouths when we are talking to someone about him and it still sounds weird. When he was a newborn we called him Little Guy, then Little Man. Somewhere down the road Baby morphed into BeBe, which morphed further into Beebs. (like beads but with a b instead of a d)