12 June 2021

Babies

Baby weighing scales

Last evening we went over to Frances and Stew's house to weigh Phoebe. Shirley had borrowed the baby weighing scales from the health centre where she works. 

Phoebe was stripped naked and placed on the scales like a plucked turkey. She didn't seem to mind a bit as grandpa continued to sing to her like a lunatic. Her skin was flawless. Towards the end of the weighing process, she made a little waterfall, showing no embarrassment whatsoever about this. I would have been mortified myself.

She is a big, healthy baby that is for sure. She weighed in at nineteen pounds exactly. Not quite five months old, her current weight places her in the ninety eighth percentile of all babies. Her only source of nutrition so far has been her mother's milk. It is really quite miraculous.

Further north in Yorkshire we have two nephews - Edward and Philip. They are Shirley's sister's sons. Their "partners" have both had babies in the last six weeks. Edward is now the father of a little girl called Winnie and Philip is the dad of another baby girl called Reeve. She was only born on Monday of this week. Everybody's doing well.

It's all girl babies round here. What are they putting in the water?  One of Frances's best friends bore a girl very recently and her very best friend Charlotte is due to burst forth in the next two or three weeks. Surely that child will be a boy. If so, he will be called Casper. If the babe is a girl, she will be called Imelda.

In these modern times, new parents come up with many surprising name choices. Who would have ever thought that a British prince would call his children Archie and Lilibet?  These names do not seem at all regal and appear to deliberately cock a snook at tradition. Not so with Prince William and The Duchess of Cambridge's three children: George, Charlotte and Louis.

We are very happy that our bonny granddaughter is called Phoebe. It means "bright" or "shining". The name originated in Ancient Greece. We hope that she will always feel comfortable with her name. It's nice to have a first name that sits well with you and is never a source of unease or even resentment.

30 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:30 am

    Phoebe is slightly difficult to spell, but hey, I just did it. I think it was a spelling I learnt from when your Phoebe was born. I like the name Reeve. Don't mention the Lilibet war.

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    1. Are you always Andrew and never Andy? If you were Andy you could fix shelves and suchlike.

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  2. Hi Mr Pudding, my next door neighbour once said to me that she would never be a grandmother as mine of her children wanted children. Ten years later she is the proud grandma of four girls.
    Regarding your query yesterday yes, I am English, you saw through my cunning disguise! 😂 Cheers. Cathy

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    Replies
    1. Were you the woman that Paul Simon wrote "Cathy's Song" for? I guess you are too young to be a grandmother.

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  3. Nineteen pounds on mother's milk- not a miracle, except in the sense that the whole process is a miracle! I do love the name Phoebe. There is a bird called a Phoebe. Did you know that?

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    Replies
    1. No! I did not know that. I will tell Frances after googling it.

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    2. Phoebes (the birds) are all over eastern North America. They are mentioned in the poem “On The Need Of Being Versed In Country Things” by Robert Frost.

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  4. Since I was a little girl, I have always been of a mind that a child, at a certain age, should be allowed to choose a name for themselves with the name chosen by the parents to be the middle name for the rest of that child’s life. But, I love the name that was given your lil’ babe. One can rejoice that her health is so magnificent and that the parents have taken to their new role so well. May it always be so.

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    Replies
    1. If that naming rule had been in existence, I would have been Neil Neil and you would perhaps have been Prima Donna.

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  5. I was apparently going to be called John. My mother told me she was very disappointed when I turned out to be a girl.

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    Replies
    1. That's not a nice thing to say to a child - even if that child is grown up.

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  6. Oh dear YP - fortunately it wasn't you stripped naked and lying on the baby scales and embarrassing yourself making a little waterfall, so don't worry about it!
    Before I was born, my mother wanted to call me Valerie, and that was going to be my name until she read a book where the heroine of that name turned out to be a murderess! There was a last minute re-think, and quick decision between Jennifer (a traditional family name) and then the one I was eventually christened.
    Phoebe is one of the old fashioned names, as is Winnie, Edie, Elsie, George, etc., that has become popular again.

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    1. Carol has been used in the United States ever since 1880, with over 825231 girls given the name in the past 200 years. Carol gained the most popularity as a baby name in 1936, when it's usage went up by 124.49%.

      By the way, they'd need a much bigger set of scales to weigh me. I'm a big lad.

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    2. Thank you for the information YP. I didn't know that Carol was such a popular name, but by the time I was born it would have been out of fashion. Although there were two other girls in my form at school also called Carol, and we were all born over the festive season.

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    3. You could have formed an all girl singing group - The Carol Singers! HA! HA! (I'm in stitches!)

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  7. It is wonderful that Phoebe is such a healthy, happy baby girl! My hairdresser, who is at the same time my neighbour and friend, is expecting her second child in September - a girl. Her firstborn is a boy, now three years old, named Noah. My American friend who calls herself my running buddy has named her two daughters Claire and Natalie. Claire after Clarence, a family name on her husband‘s side.
    If I had been a boy, my parents would have named me Kai. You know my sister‘s name; before she was born, my parents were discussing Isabelle, among others.

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    1. Claire and Natalie are nice names and I like the name Meike much more than Kai. Your sister's name is of course top secret.

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  8. What was Phoebe's weight after the waterfall? Did you watch it decreasing?

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    1. The wee-wee stayed in the weighing bowl you can see in the picture - so no weight reduction.

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  9. Precious moments for you all.

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    Replies
    1. Yes. A bright light in the darkness.

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  10. I love watching how names go in and out of fashion. No one names their kids Stephen anymore! Neil is still out there among newer generations, I believe.

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  11. Love the name Phoebe and she is definitely thriving and growing well. My one year old grandson is 21 pounds and also breast fed. But he eats hearty meals also and has an excellent appetite.

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  12. Hello again Mr P, Paul Simon sadly has never met me, but if he had, I would have been his muse. At least, that's my story!
    And yes I am a proud grandma to a wonderful grand son who has recently become a teenager (yikes) and who is now taller than me (I'm 5'4" ). His dad is 6'4" so he's got a bit of a way to go. Happy days. Cheers Cathy 😊

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  13. Phoebe is healthy and growing like a weed. She got weighed and serenaded, all at the same time. One of the moons of Saturn is called Phoebe. Lucky girl.

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  14. Be thankful for an abundance of girl babies. My wife, a nurse in a neonatal unit for many years, has a theory that when a lot of boy babies are born there is going to be a war in a few years and God/Mother Nature is getting ready for it. She seems normal in every other regard.

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  15. Peace Thyme's idea of the child choosing her own name is innovative.
    In the age of Gender Theory girls might choose a boy's name, and vice versa.
    An Anglican priest in Nova Scotia said that the children's section of their public library had books on display with titles like *Sean Wants To Be A Mermaid*.

    See *Library Displaying Jacob's New Dress* : Fr. Ed Trevors. YouTube.

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  16. So as my son says, "I make good girls." He has two girls.

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  17. I've never liked my first name Josephine though I don't mind Jo. In Scotland you are quite often given a surname as a middle name so I don't even have a nice middle name. When I had my 2 sons I was determined to call them ordinary names they would not be embarrassed about. The name Phoebe is lovely but reminds me of my friend at primary school who thought it was pronounced Phobe (Fobe) which I always found funny.

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Mr Pudding welcomes all genuine comments - even those with which he disagrees. However, puerile or abusive comments from anonymous contributors will continue to be given the short shrift they deserve. Any spam comments that get through Google/Blogger defences will also be quickly deleted.

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