Deanne

I like the woody taste.

Deanne was born a few months shy of three years after Valerie. With the experience with Valerie's labor, we didn't know what to expect.  Luckily, this one was more like the first two. 

Contractions started in the afternoon on a Wednesday during Advent.  A friend from church had just died, and I needed to practice singing Amazing Grace at her funeral.  The organist and I planned on meeting before church and going through it.  The contractions weren't too bad yet, so Gail said to go ahead and we would head to the hospital after practice.

So, we dropped the kids off at a neighbors and headed to church.  As I practice, the contractions started getting harder.  It was a bit disconcerning to the members coming for service to see Gail in the office in labor.  I never really lived that one down.

After we practiced, we headed off to the hospital and voila, another girl.  I was actually thankful it was a girl, since raising a boy with three older sisters would probably permanently scar him.

That evening, I went to the neighbors to pick up the older girls and I found that they had been throwing up all evening.  I sat with Valerie on my lap, something which brought out the jealousy in Corinne.  I still hear about that from Corinne when the subject comes up.

While we were pregnant, one of Gail's friends wrote us a letter indicating that all of our kids (to date) had names that started with a roman numeral, and asked us if we were going to continue the trend.  Once we were aware of the pattern, we had to continue it.  Xanthippe and Imogene were ruled out, so we settled on Deanne.   Something her Oma still has trouble pronouncing.