Babies

Here's a copy of an email I sent to the DLM family email group, after everyone had gotten identical emails from Joel and Hilda and Shane and Dorcas:

This news has been very hard to keep under wraps--Iwashige twins on the way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We already know that they will not be identical. We even know that they will not be fraternal. We're not even sure they will be born on the same day. But until other information is incontrovertible, we're counting on two Iwashige babies with Oct. 28 birthdays.

You should have heard the exclamations and seen the expressions when Joel and Hilda and Shane and Dorcas began to compare due date notes around the table when all the Iwashiges were together.

This grandmother-to-be promises that she did not announce the date four months ago and begin cracking the whip. Announcements and whip cracking do not produce babies anyway, so it's a good thing I didn't do that.

So pleased . . .

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Here's a copy of the identical emails:

All,

We thought you might enjoy knowing that the next generation of the DLM
family is, apparently, under way! If all goes well, we're planning on
welcoming a new Iwashige to the world around October 28 of this year.
Feel free to consider this public (rather than "friends and family")
news on or after this Sunday. :-)

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We're mindful that the safe arrival of a healthy child is always a gift and not a guarantee, so we are interceding already on behalf of these babies and their parents. But we're rejoicing meanwhile in the goodness of God Who has already given us this Good Thing to look forward to.

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Last week people here heard the news about Dorcas' sister expecting twin girls in Thailand.

I joked with Dorcas that she obviously has some "twin genes" in her family, but it probably also takes being married into the EJM family. Dorcas' sister's husband is part of a local couple's extended family that included several sets of twin grandchildren, and at least four sets of twin great grandchildren. The unborn twins will be the fifth--unless another set of twins appears in the meantime.

One baby will be quite enough as far as Dorcas is concerned.

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Tonight after church several of us ladies talked about different ways of distinguishing between the two sets of grandparents most children have. One local family uses "Opa" and "Oma"--the Dutch words for Grandma and Grandma. This makes sense since they used to live in a Dutch speaking part of Belgium, and the mother is a native of that area. The Shenks called one set of grandparents names I can't remember--from a language Edith couldn't remember either. Linda reminded me that we called our Kansas grandparents Mommy and Daudy, and our Iowa grandparents Grussmommy and Grussdaudy.

Hilda has Spanish in her family's history of having lived in El Salvador. Dorcas has Luo from having lived in Kisumu, Kenya (among Obama's father's tribesmen). I don't know what the Luo grandparent words are and I'm not sure that the Spanish ones would seem quite right. I guess I'm assuming that the other set of our grandchildren's grandparents will want "regular" names, so it's probably up to us to be have the irregular ones. Hiromi and I are considering Grandpa-san and Grandma-chan. (We're giggling though about the possibility, so far.) Ojiisan and Obaasan are probably just a little too strange all around.

What other ideas are out there--for grandparent names?

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Linda remembers more than I do about the dilemma Joel had as the oldest child and grandchild--being taught relationship titles that no one else used.

Linda remembers that I suggested once that he pray for Daddy and Mommy and Grandpa and Grandma, so he did--only he said Hiromi and Miriam and Mom and Dad.

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The owner of Software Builders has 12 children, and, while no employee has come close to approaching this family population feat as far as I know, there does seem to be a minor flurry of activity in the population increase department. Josh and Joel are both expecting their first child, and Ellis is expecting his fourth--in the same month, as I understand it.

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Willard Mast's birthday is on the Iwashige babies' due date. My father's birthday is the 18th, which he thinks would be a good day for the babies to arrive. (I suspect it would be easy to find agreement on that--from Dorcas and Hilda, especially--when the 18th rolls around.) My nephew, Joey, has a birthday on the 26th, and another nephew Zachery, has a birthday on the 27th. Babies don't know, of course, that a due date is an appointment, and, if they did, they might still show an inconvenient disregard for punctuality in this matter.

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All the baby news is creating quite a buzz.