"Moses supposes his toses are roses..."

"...but Moses supposes erroneously."
-Singin' In The Rain (1952)

Friday night we had the dreaded responsibility to explain to the maternal birth family of our youngest (whom we are in the process of adopting) that we would be changing his name.
As we expected, it was difficult to recieve. What I find interesting, is that not only the birthfamily, but the adoption counselor assumed that we would keep his given name. Now, we recieved him at 5 months old, so all parties involved have been used to his legally given name, but to assume that we would not take the same time, care and thought which we put into our bio-kids names for his name as well....you know what they say about assuming....
We want to fully claim him, he is part of our family as much as any of our bios. I think, in the long run, it will be good for the birth family. It hit them like a Mack Truck, but they needed the umbilicus cut. I know that they'll recover and hopefully the relationship will be better because of this. I think they still felt in control and quite frankly, they aren't. What kind of pisses me off, is that the so called adoption counselor should really know better. She took it upon herself to put his given name on the adoption/court papers we signed without even asking what we were going to have has his name. This chick has been doing this work for 15 years.
Amazing....what do you expect? She is a Notre Dame graduate, after all.


"What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;"
-Romeo and Juliet | Act II, Scene 2

The birth grandfather (Whom I like the best of all of them) said the most mature comment of the entire birth family. "He's still the same sweet little boy." Mature, and sober, but the whole name thing as it influences who we are is a discussion I will expound upon at a later date.