{matilda}

While back in England last month, I came face to face with twenty-something years of my stored stuff. A little trip down Sentimental Lane, yes, but knowing that whatever I saved, I'd have to carry in my suitcase and drag half way around the world, I was ruthless. Goodbye, ugly Beanie Babies (yes, you, Millennium bear, you purple monster). So long, high-school yearbooks, and all your teenage stress. Farewell, and sorry, plastic animals that I chewed legs off of.

But one thing that definitely made the suitcase, packed safely beneath two hundred Duplo blocks and three dozen slightly mangy Sylvanian Families, was a book. My favourite book. A book I've read at least twenty times, often in a single sitting. A book I was given just before my seventh birthday, (ta, Jenni) and which has proved to be rather important in our lives...

Matilda. This is what our Matilda, our fifteen-month-old Tilly-Bear, is named after. I loved the idea of infusing her with a bit of magic. Yes, we might have long afternoons of sitting on the bed trying to move pencils with our eyes, but who knows, perhaps she'll be able to.

And can you believe, it wasn't until two years ago, when I was telling my grandma about my favourite names for girls, that she mentioned her mother, my great-grandmother, was also called Matilda? Cha-ching, bonus family connection! It was meant to be.

Reading the book again, I'm finding lines that are full of the brilliance of Matilda. Wouldn't that be a lovely reminder of her namesake -- a quote from the book, displayed somehow in her room. It's not all boastful parenty if Roald Dahl said it, right? And, perhaps, a bonus photo of her great-great grandmother on the wall too, just for total Matildination.