A Horse With No Name

Look at the beauty we inherited this week! A colleague of ours generously passed on this rocking horse that her kids have outgrown. Isn't he lovely? He's the best looking rocking horse I think I've ever seen! As I was running my hands along his svelte frame, my eyes were drawn to a small sticker near the bottom. A sticker that someone had almost succeeded in removing. I'm glad it was one of those stubborn stickers that threatens to leave a sticky papery mess and eventually forces its assailant to give up the fight. Otherwise, we'd have never known...

This horse hails from Latvia! (Is anyone else picking up on a Baltic theme in our family...?)

Anyway, I've named him Seabiscuit. Yep, I did. I realize that's not a very Baltic or Trojan sounding name, but that was my dad's nickname for me when I was a young girl. Seabiscuit was a famous racehorse back in the 30's when my dad was a young boy. It wasn't until the book Seabiscuit came out that I learned of the inspiration behind my nickname. (I always thought my dad was calling me C-Biscuit, as in Celia-Biscuit...??). My dad gave me a copy of the book that year for Christmas, and to this day, it's my all-time favorite Christmas present. It makes me teary every time I read it. My dad's note, that is. Not the book. Although, that made me teary, too, if I remember correctly. 

Have I come full circle here? Or am I still off on a tangent or two? I can't seem to remember where I was going with this... Maybe I should close by pointing out how ironic it is that it took me no time at all to come up with a name for our new rocking horse from Latvia - a rather meaningful name at that - while we keep referring to our little guy in Kaliningrad as Our Little Guy. (I won't, however, point out how strange it is that I'm naming inanimate objects!) It'll come, our inspiration for a name. It might not take the form of a famous race horse, but it will come.