What's In a Name...

Things are starting to fall into place and we are on track to leave for Vietnam on Thursday, August 16th. We will arrive around 9:30 pm on Friday night and are hoping we will be able to see Lucas and have him with us on Saturday. Typically we would likely have to wait until our Giving and Receiving Ceremony (the official adoption ceremony) which is scheduled for August 20th, but because he does not have contact lenses until we get there, they will hopefully allow us to take him with us.

We had a bit of a scare last night when we heard from another parent scheduled to travel at the same time and with the same ceremony date, who is now delayed until September 4th! After some panic we were able to get confirmation that our plans would not be affected, and are glad to hear that the other parent was able to get travel plans re-booked and will still hopefully have some overlap with us in Vietnam.

Many people have asked about Lucas' name. With Maiya, we had several names picked out, knowing that we wanted to include at least some of her Vietnamese name if possible. When we heard her name was Mai, we both looked at each other and said, "Maiya". Mai means cherry blossom in Vietnamese, and Maiya means springtime. Thanh means bright light or brilliant sun, and my middle name is Lynn, so Maiya Thanhlyn became our springtime cherry blossom in the brilliant sun. We hadn't come up with any boy names and when we got the referral, we referred to him as Khanh, which is his Vietnamese name. The closest pronunciation we could get was "Kane", although I think it is actually more like "Kawn". We couldn't find a clear meaning for his Vietnamese name, but "Kane" means warrior, and with his vision needs, we figured he's already had to be a little fighter and will have to continue that throughout his life. About 10 minutes before we told Maiya about her little brother, I was trying to put together a book on iPhoto and we still didn't have a name. I came across "Lucas", which means "bringer of light" - and and it just seemed to fit. Something about the meaning seemed to click with the vision piece, and since Maiya has "light" in her name too, it was decided. So he will be Lucas Khanh (pronounced Kane). For both, we wanted something that was relatively easy for them to switch back to their Vietnamese names should they ever choose to do so in the future.

It has been a crazy few days, between Canada Post not delivering our passports last Friday to our travel agent and some frantic phone calls to them over the weekend trying to track them down (they arrived back to us today with the visas, so record time getting them done!) and finding out the contact lenses that we just purchased are no longer the right prescription! We just received the new prescription today, so we'll see if it's enough time for our optometrist to get the new ones ordered in and return the others. They have been AMAZING helping us out with all the contacts stuff, so that has been great. The nursery is about as ready as it's going to get, last load of baby laundry is waiting to be folded, cutting myself off from my work email as of today (trying at least!) - so other than everything being dumped in a pile in the basement all that's left after some last minute errands tomorrow is the packing!

This picture of Maiya just after she found out about her baby brother kind of sums up how we are all feeling right now!