It's a Small World After All

Wednesday, Mar. 29, 2006
12:41 PM

Before we got married, Kevin and I discovered we had a common ancestor, one William Wilbur, 13 generations back in the early 17th century. I'm pretty much directly descended from him while Kevin's Wilbur ancestry disappears in just a couple of generations. At the time we thought it was wildly coincidental, freaky but kind of cool. (This little factoid also prompted Kevin's parish priest, who married us, to make a remark that left Kevin spluttering indignantly. Ask him about it sometime.)

Then we found something freakier. It turns out we also have a common ancestor on my mother's side, the Dudleys. Mom's been doing a lot of genealogical research over the past year or two and has mapped out the Dudley line going back to the 15th century. Kevin's aunt did tons of research and we found Dudleys in her record book too. She even had ancestors listed that went back to the 12th century. It amazes me that Kevin and I have common ancestry on not just one but both sides of my family. Our line diverges with the sons of one Edmund Dudley, called Lord Dudley and Chevalier. He died sometime in 1483.

It's really kind of cool to me that we've found this information, not just for us but for Tommy as well. We named him Thomas after Kevin's dad, and gave him Dudley as a middle name because that is my mother's maiden name. Now we've found that at least one of our ancestors was actually named Thomas Dudley (I think there were two, actually, which caused us some confusion in trying to figure out who was who in the family tree.) I like that his name gives him ties to our common past, an extra layer of meaning and significance. I'm not all that into genealogy but I do find it interesting. And not a little weird.

Tommy is doing great. He's been able to hold his head up since birth, but he's holding it up longer and steadier now. He seems somewhat more aware of his hands - he doesn't look at them much but he does deliberately get them to his mouth to suck on them. (They haven't replaced his paci, though.) Best of all, he's starting to smile socially. While the sleep grins that flit across his face as he's drifting off are adorable, the real social smiles are the best. It's just amazing, and gratifying, that he can now show his response to our talking, singing and playing with him. Yesterday I went in to pick him up from his nap and he was smiling at himself in the mirror in his crib. Talk about cute!