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Day: November 22, 2008

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Saturday

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So Saturday rolls around.  I get up, as I usually do, around 6:30.  I go downstairs, check my email, load the dishwasher with the few things that were used the night before, and wake Jim.  He goes downstairs, sees the mountain of unfolded socks, towels, and underwear on the love seat and says we are not leaving until the mountain is folded and put away.  Does he offer to help with that endeavor?  No, he does not.  He settles down in front of his computer to play his game, and I know that if he did not have a game he was interested in, we would be in the car by 7 AM.  I tell him i have at least 3 hours worth of clothes folding – this is, after all, a MOUNTAIN of socks, and socks are so difficult for me.  Eilis, Brighid and I wear nearly the same size.  Eilis still has some socks that are similar to Granuaile’s.  I hate sorting socks.  He wakes Brighid to help me, and eventually, the other two girls come down and interfere with the process.  It takes me 2 hours, and I finish at about 9 AM.

While I am sorting socks, as I said, Jim is gaming, so the car does not get loaded.  He later complains that we should have finished packing the night before so he could have loaded the car, ignoring the fact that we were done packing by 1 AM the night before, and he could have loaded the car.  He waits until we are done sorting socks to get dressed himself, and then Brighid and I get Eilis and Granuaile dressed.  Jim then decides we have packed incorrectly, and some rearranging needs to be done.  He wants nothing in the bag for the cruise except what we are taking on the cruise, and nothing in the other bags except what is NOT going on the cruise.  We are supposed to have a bag to stay overnight, with clothes that we will put on Monday morning as we leave for the cruise.  We have to have the stuff we are going to put on Saturday and Sunday when we are off of the cruise.  And we have to do all of this without letting the other two kids know we are going on the cruise.

So FINALLY at about 10 AM, all loaded in the car, we head to Starbucks to grab my coffee.  On the way back from Starbucks, we stop back at home to retrieve the belt I forgot to pack for Jim, who didn’t want to help pack.  We are not officially on our way to Florida until just about 11 AM.  The plan is to stop for the night just before we hit Georgia, and continue the last leg of the trip on Sunday.

And then the fighting starts.  The girls, all three in the back seat of a rented Grand Marquis, are fidgeting, arguing over space, and overall just crabby.  So Jim says, “I wonder how much airfare is to Orlando.”  A quick call to US Airways, despite my protests that it’s a holiday and airfare is going to be outrageously high, Jim finds airfare to Orlando for $59.  At just a few minutes shy of Delaware, we turn the car around, race home, and book airfare to Orlando, leaving on Sunday.  Brighid and I spent the day Christmas shopping, and we all got a good night’s sleep at home 🙂  What a great way to start the trip!

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They Call Me….Granuaile

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We new Granuaile would be a girl before she was born.  Jim, Brighid and I played with a lot of names – well, Brighid and I played with a lot of names, but Jim felt like he had final veto power over any of the names we chose.  I prefer very traditional Irish names, and spent a lot of time at this website, which features Frank McCourt pronouncing the Irish names for baby.  http://www.babynamesofireland.com/

My sister, Bean, who’s real name was Frances, died on March 7th, 2003.  I knew that I wanted to incorporate the name Bean or Frances into the baby’s name – whether the baby turned out to be a boy or a girl – but I don’t so much love the name Frances, and Bean, well, that’s just odd.  I decided Frances would be the baby’s middle name – or Francis if it was a boy (don’t tell Jim, who was convinced that if there was a boy, he would have been named Junior), and then set out to find something meaningful for a first name.

I loved a lot of the names I researched.  Aoife was one of my absolute favorites, and I think if there had been one more baby girl in our future, there might have been enough time to convince Jim that I should be able to use that name.  Pronounced Ee-Fa, the name means “beautiful, radiant, and joyful”.  Who wouldn’t want their baby girl to have a name that means all those wonderful things?  But that strong handed veto came down hard on Aoife.

Brighid has a CD of a band called Blackthorn, and one of the songs they perform is called “Granuaile”.  It’s an homage to Grace O’Malley, the pirate queen of Ireland, but the first two lines of the song is where the idea to name the baby came from.

“She was small, but what a sight!  Men were wrapped around her finger tight.”  I could just see our beautiful, tiny baby girl, doing what her two sisters before her had accomplished within minutes of their births – wrapping her Daddy around her little finger.  And to further convince me that Granuaile should be her name, the name itself means Grace O’Malley – and O’Malley is my Grandmom Fee’s maiden name.  I loved that woman to pieces, and Eilis’ middle name is in tribute to her, but how nice would it be to honor her even further?

Knowing that Granuaile is a mouthful for anyone – let alone a small child learning to speak and learn their name – a conversation was had where the family agreed that the baby would be called Granuaile Frances, and her nickname would be Gracie Bean.  It was cute, it was doable, and we all agreed.  Even the birth announcements were sent out with “Gracie Bean” in quotation marks underneath the name Granuaile Frances.  And Jim printed out those announcements.

Now, this amazing little creature is 3 and a half years old.  She’s been called many things in that short time, but only her father has consistently called her Granuaile – when he is not calling her JR Super Baby (JR came from his desperate desire to have a Junior).  Most of the rest of the time, she’s been called Gracie.  She even calls herself Gracie.

As she gets older, though, and closer to school age, her father becomes more adamant that we should use her real name.  And Granuaile becomes more resistant.  To begin with, it’s easier to say Gracie.  She can say Granuaile, but only the immediate family will know that’s WHAT she is saying (it comes out sort of like “Gwon-well”).  And she will have full blown arguments with her father over her name.  If she wants a treat or a snack, he’ll say, “What’s your name?” and she’ll answer “Gracie”.  And the battle begins, continuing until I step in, grab the snack out of Jim’s hand, and hand it to the baby.

So I stopped in at work the other day to pick up a few meals for the kids.  My boss has not met my daughters, but I brought them in with me so Brighid could choose the meals.  As grown ups will do with small children, my boss leaned over and asked Granuaile what her name was.  Nine times out of ten, she won’t answer at all, and on the tenth time, she’ll say Gracie.  But this was Monday morning, just hours after a weekend with her father calling her Granuaile.  So when Roseann leaned over and said, “And what’s your name?”, my little girl looked back up and said,

“My father makes me say Granuaile, but my name is Gracie.”

And it makes me reminisce about the days when then 4 year old Brighid demanded to be called “Pansy”.  No reason. It just sounded good.