Power Animal

Over the last 7 months I have purchased next to nothing for out baby. A few things here and there, but to be quite honest, I thought I would wait until the gifts came in and then see what I was missing or what I still needed. Without ever making comments, people completely and totally unrelated to each other, with absolutely no way of conspiring to do so, have gifted us items with giraffes on them. I am not talking about one or two items, I am talking about nearly every article of clothing, as well as baby blankets, bibs, and burp rags, all with giraffes printed or sewn to their fabric. The first few times this happened, I thought, "wow, what a coincidence." But now I am beginning to wonder.

Two days ago a package came for me in the mail. One of the most lovely packages I have received in a long time. So lovely, in fact, that it brought tears to my eyes and made me miss my friend Melani in profound ways that I couldn't quite find the words to explain.
This care package was so special as everything inside was handmade in San Francisco, two little onsies, some photos, a pair of awesome earrings for me...and yes, a hand sewn giraffe stuffed animal.

Meet Jonas the giraffe!

All of this got me to thinking about power animals, and that perhaps our baby's power animal is the giraffe. If this is so, then what does it all mean, I wondered to myself.
So I started snooping around on the internet to see what I could find, and surprisingly, there are many people that whole-heartedly believe in animals as your power animals and have written dozens of books on the topic.

According to Ina Woolcott, the giraffe represents the symbol of grounded vision and farsightedness. They are capable of seeing far into the future, whereby reaching things that are unreachable to others, such as: communication, intuition, and the ability to remain above the fray. Just in case I have sparked an interest in you and you would like to read more on the topic, here is a website that is quite interesting:

http://www.shamanicjourney.com/article/6035/giraffe-power-animal-symbol-of-grounded-vision-farsightedness

So this got me to thinking of all sorts of stuff like, "what will be the Chinese zodiac in February of 2010?" So I snooped around a bit more, killing more time than I actually had, and found that if the baby is born after February 14th, he/she will be born the year of the tiger. However, he/she will not just be born into any ole year of the tiger, but what they call the year of the Metal Tiger.

"What the hell does this mean?" I thought. Well, according to Wikipedia, the Chinese zodiac is divided into "10 heavenly stems (the five elements in their yin and yang forms), which combine with the 12 earthly branches (or Chinese signs of the zodiac), to form the 60 year cycle."

"umm, I still don't get it," I was thinking...so I read on.

The qualities associated with metal are unyieldingness, rigidity, persistence, strength and determination. The metal person is controlling, ambitious, forceful and set in their ways as metal is very strong; and they are self-reliant and prefer to handle their problems alone. The metal person is also materialistic, business oriented and good at organization and stability. However the metal person can also appreciate luxury and enjoy the good things in life. Just as metal can conduct electricity, the Metal person has strong impulses and generative powers and can bring about changes and transformations for those who come into contact with them. Metal is believed to govern the lungs, nose and skin. The negative emotion associated with metal is grief, while the positive emotion is courage.

Haha! Now that sounds like a child of mine!!! Hold on to your horses everybody!!! If these china men know anything about personalities and predicting them, we are in for a fun and interesting ride!