Day 2

Hey Sage,

I heard you this morning! I called your mom to see how you guys were doing, and you were eating and crying and eating and crying and sucking and crying. I got to hear your powerful lungs for myself over the phone. You sound great!

So your name. We thought it might be Sage. But Mommy totally had me fooled by claiming adamantly that it wasn't going to be Sage after all. I believed her! And then you were born, and we found out this is your name! I, for one, am pretty psyched about it. I think it's gorgeous! It's unique and interesting and pretty.

First of all, in 2006, it was only 415th in popularity in the U.S. Let me tell you, as someone whose name was 25th most popular the year I was born, you are glad about this. You won't graduate from high school with 42 other Sages. I even had 2 other people with the same first and middle name as I in my class in high school! This for sure won't happen to you with a middle name like "Boss"!

Three celebrity kids are named Sage. Sylvester Stallone's son, who was born way back in 1976, Toni Collette's little girl born in 2008, and Tracey Gold's (of Growing Pains fame) son born in 1997. Two boys and a girl. You round that out nicely.

You are also named after a spice! Simon and Garfunkel sing about you. There's an entire album called Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, with a song called Scarborough Fair. Listen here. This is the album cover: Pretty cool!

Also, sage is a way to cleanse and bless your house, a process also known as smudging. You are supposed to carry it through the house letting the smoke fill each room and each corner. Sage is burned in smudging to drive out bad spirits, feelings, or influences, and also to keep bad spirits from entering the area. I know a few people who do this regularly and it not only smells great, but its a great way to keep things pure.

There's a town in Arkansas called Sage too! Cool!

You are lucky to be born into a time when there is an internet page for just about everything. I got all this info from this! Lots of interesting things about your name.

I call your sister Sonia-ita, using the Spanish diminutive ending. Your name doesn't work with that, really. So I did some research on diminutives in other languages. Lots to choose from. I'm between -ele, which is Jewish, and -ina, which is Italian. So it would be Sagele or Sageina. I am going to try them both out and see which I end up liking better.

You've not even been here 24 hours yet, so there's plenty of time to figure this stuff out.

Love you so much already,

Auntie K