About Willa

For those wanting details, here are details. Everyone else, feel free to skip.

Willa is named for her paternal great-grandmother – my father’s mother. G-gma was Williamina and known as Mina, but we went with the alternative spelling Willamina to be known as Willa (and for an easier time spelling her name). Both versions are Scots variants on the Germanic form, Wilhelmina. It means “protector”, which is a pretty good name meaning to have.

Willa’s middle name Therese appears on both sides of the family tree. She’s taking my last name, Davie, at least for now. We don’t have a long-term strategy for a family name. We can talk about it with her when she’s old enough to have an opinion, I guess.

Willa arrived weighing just under 9 pounds (just over 4kg), which is big but not huge. She was long, 53cm I think, so she might have inherited my height. She could just lift her head right from birth, and a week on is easily able to support her own head long enough to turn it towards whatever she wants to look at.

Willa likes to sleep with her hands on either side of her forehead, fingers curled forward. She’s a good healthy feeder and is generally very content and happy. We are seriously counting our blessings in this regard because a lot of our friends have had rough rides with their new babies; hopefully this good streak will continue. (Cal jokingly argues that she deserves some easy time after a long nausea-ridden pregnancy!)

Willa has big feet. I took four randomly-selected pairs of baby booties to the hospital; three pairs were much too small, and the other just fit.

We read her her first story today; Hairy Maclary. Of course she had no idea what was going on but I think she picked up that something a bit special was happening. She spent most of the duration looking at the book rather than at Cal or me, and Cal thought she liked listening to my voice. (It’s a good book, lovely to read. Also: full of dogs, which fits into Cal’s masterplan to have every child in the world love dogs.)

She’s wonderful, basically, and the most amazing thing is how much it seems like she belongs here. Having her in our lives is perfectly right.

Oh also I’m total stereotypical dad with a camera full of baby photos. But I will try not to spam y’all.

[We haven’t opened our hoose to visitors just yet, but I look forward to showing her off soon!]

9 thoughts on “About Willa”

  1. Given that Cal suggested ‘Wandergisilus’ as a potential name for our firstborn, I was slightly disappointed that you didn’t use it yourselves.

    She looks like a lovely wee pickle. Nice one.

  2. Now tell Cal that we need the other details, the ones which paint her in the heroic role of delivering a 4kg baby after x, many hours of labour on top of a nine month pregnancy that involved holding down exactly ONE square meal…

    I like the name btw. The one-of-your-own-grandparents naming scheme is making a big comeback these days and is of course the inspiration behind my son’s name. I was wondering if this is a subconscious thing that helps create connectedness between generations, a glue for present and past.

    Anyway, I do hope that the doors are open for a Willa viewing in Feb cause I’ll certainly be knocking!

  3. I loved the image of your special family reading Hairy Maclary together. Olive loves that book. Great to here everything good and hope it continues

  4. She looks fab and so glad to hear she is calm and all.

    My Godson, now nearly 10!, lovedbeing read to right from his first weeks. He particularly loved things that could be read with a bit of rhythm or pattern to them; he got into the rhythm long before he could figure out the whole concept of words and their meaning.

    Love to you all from this side of the World!

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