Vava: Pourquoi?

Because it's a new-to-your-ears sort of name, a lot of people ask us why we plan to name our daughter Vava.

I'll take you back to our teensy first apartment, where we lived in joyful empty-walletness, completely surrounded by love.  We hadn't been married very long, and already started thinking tentatively about kids.  We were in our 3rd year of university, working part time, and only occasionally making ends meet ... well, mostly just letting them wave at each other now and then.

We knew it wouldn't be a wise time to bring children into our world, and I think that was harder on Patrick's heart than mine.  I was okay with the wait.  The thought of bringing a baby home to our furniture-less place wasn't terribly appealing.  School first, then a baby, we decided.

Then one day I was reading a book, and the main character described what it was like to be a Mom.  I was filled with longing, and I knew I wanted kids - I wanted them as soon as we could have them.  I pounced on a napping Patrick and told him I wanted to start growing our family.  Not just sometime, not just later, but now, even if it meant we lived off pasta and peanut butter the rest of our lives.

Giddy with excitement, we headed downtown to walk and talk and sort out just what we might do.  We held hands and smiled at each other in the brilliant sunshine, and even the homeless people seemed beautiful and right.

We wandered into a bookstore near the neighbourhood where Patrick proposed, and found ourselves in the kids book section.  A gorgeously illustrated book caught our eye.  It was titled 'Je Suis Fou de Vava' (I Am Crazy for Vava).  It was the story of a little boy who was madly in love with a little girl, who wore a yellow dress and yellow ribbons in her hair.  It was so sweet, and we could hardly bear to leave it behind.  We both fell in love with the name, and decided if we ever were blessed with a daughter, we would name her Vava.

So, that's how Vava came to have her name.
And it's quite true ... we're crazy for Vava.

(Her birth certificate will call her Vivian Varvara - Vivian because it's my Grammy's name, and Varvara because together they shorten so deliciously into Vava.  And the 'var's in Varvara rhyme with car, not care.  And yes - after we found out this was a girl - we bought the book.)