What's in a name?

For twenty-four hours my son's name was Baby Boy according to the hospital.  Now, I know you are probably thinking that we had roughly eight months to come up with a boy's name.  However, my husband wished to follow a church tradition of naming your child after a saint from the calendar.  Each day has several different saints commemorated on the Orthodox calendar.  There would be three different days I could choose from.  I could choose a saint from the day he was born, the eighth day after he was born (which traditional is the day of the baby's naming), or the fortieth day after he was born (which is the day that the child is usually brought to the church with the mother for the first time, usually when the baby is blessed/baptized.)

Wanting to be prepared, I had gone through the calendar and chosen my favorite name for each day for the whole month surrounding my due date.  When we knew that I was going to go in to be induced on September 29th, I looked at the names.  There happened to be two for that day that I liked, John (after John the Baptist) and Dimitri (after St. Demetrios.) 

It came down to the day and we just could not settle on which name.  Once I saw him a really felt that he was Dimitri but Paul was still not sure.  I really liked both names but we happen to have a lot of Johns in my family.  I also liked the fact that Dimitri would be said the same whether it was somebody speaking to him in English or in Russian.  John would be two different ways to say the name, basically translated.

Finally, we chose Dimitri.  It worked out perfectly because we were able to have him baptized on his saint's day.  St. Demtrios is commemorated on October 26th/November 8th.  (Two dates?  This is because we follow the Julian calendar in our church, which is thirteen days behind.  So, when it is November 8th according to America and the world, it is October 26th according to our church calendar.) 

According to the life of Saint Demetrios that we have in our book, it says that his parents prayed for a child and they were given Demetrios.  I liked this similarity!  St. Demetrios was a martyr that lived in Thessilonica from 270-305(6).  He professed Christ after the Emperor had sent him to persecute Christians.  You can read more about him here: http://www.serfes.org/lives/stdemetrios.htm.

My Dimitri is getting bigger. He has now learned to sit by himself very well. He likes to watch everything that happens around him. And he is eating more solids everyday. He has tried carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, peas, spinach, apples, bananas, and baby oatmeal and rice cereal. He is not fond of his vegetables but loves bananas and apples. His latest thing is to scrunch up his nose when he smiles at you.

My life is always changing with this little guy. I never know what he is going to learn next.