I know you’re all on tenterhooks about our name choices, so I thought I’d mention that we may have changed our girl name. Our boy name is the old standby we’ve had for years, and we haven’t entirely let go of our earlier choice for a girl, but we did add another option. I’m not going to reveal it just yet, because I like to savor these things privately for a while before releasing them (as usual, it’s something a bit unconventional that I’m sure would leave plenty of people shaking their heads).

I was thinking earlier that my kids — Lydia aside, obviously — would have much different names if I still lived in the States. First, I likely wouldn’t even have been exposed to the Norse names we’ve used, and second, some of the wonderful names I’ve had to discard because I don’t like them in Swedish would still be on the table. The loss of Caroline and Daniel, in particular, will always pain me. And Brynja would absolutely have been Bryony. That one still stings, too.