How do you pronounce "Kaija"?
Well, you probably pronounce it correctly, but there are some people out there who insist on mispronouncing it.
If you speak Finnish, it is easy. Just pronounce it as written.
Otherwise, if you are from Boston, it's easy. "Kaija" rhymes with "fire."
Otherwise, if you are from Southern California, it's easy. "Kaija" rhymes with "Playa" as in Playa del Rey.
Otherwise, if you know the international phonetic alphabet (IPA), it's easy. Kaija = /kaja/.
Otherwise, you can rhyme it with "Maya" as in the ancient Mayan civilization. More on that here, a particularly fatheaded response from a Dr. Joseph F. Foster to an "Ask the Linguist" question.
Do not say /keja/ (rhymes with "Freya") or /ki:ya/ (like the car manufacturer, Kia). In Finnish those would be Keija and Kiija, and we didn't name her either of those names.
PS. I get a kick out of the double meanings of the phrase "Modified Czech IPA" used by Dr. Joseph F (Fathead?) Foster. Google's never heard of such a thing, so it finds pages which include all three words. Linguistic: a map of the phonemes of Czech (IPA = international phonetic alphabet) is here. Brewing: the Czechs don't make IPA's (India pale ales) because, I don't know, maybe something to do with the limited maritime tradition of a landlocked nation. But "IPA" "Czech" and "modified" are words used in brewing so there are lots of brewing hits too. Brewing and linguistics, together at last.
The true meaning of love is being willing to handle another person's feces. In our culture at least. Yes, I am talking about diapering, and I did warn that this would be all-baby-all-the-time.
I now understand how people can say that breastfed babies "wet" diapers are "not offensive," but anyone who thinks the smell is pleasant needs to have his head examined. Sure, it can be associated with pleasant memories. But "pleasant" in its own right? These are the people scratch-n-sniff manure was invented for.
Anyway, my wife and I made this deal: while Kaija is exclusively nursing, I'll take care of the output as long as my wife provides the input. Once she starts eating solid foods as well as nursing (usually around 6 months) then we'll refigure the diapering.
On Sunday it occurred to me that there is a discrete, finite number of diapers that my girl will wear in her life, and that number is an upper bound on the number of her diapers I will have to change. We did some quick figuring and came up with between 4,000 and 7,000 depending on when she toilet-trains. It's a lot of diapers but it helps to know that there is an end.