we welcomed little miss octavia home this september! in the wake of losing our previous boxer morgan, the few weeks without a pup in the house felt like an eternity. she is a breath of fresh air in what has been a season of mouldering months, and brings us so much happiness and joy on a daily basis! we are so grateful for her new presence in our hearts and lives.

we struggled a bit on coming up with a name for this beautiful girl. i had a name i'd picked out a few years ago that i'd always intended to use on our next pup, but when the time came it just didn't seem to fit her photo. she looked so strong-willed and stubborn, even at just a few weeks old! the name i'd had on tap was too calm and earthy for the spitfire i knew we were about to have on our hands. so back to the drawing board we went. j and i had pretty drastically different suggestions - he favored intense names rooted in mythology such as bellatrix and athena, whereas my ideas were far more trite, leaning toward olivia, isla, ava and the like.

i researched and combed through lists of baby names, compiling favorites 10 at a time and handing them over for j to review. on one list, he finally said "oh there was one i liked there...octavia." that name had come to me not from a baby name list, but from memories of my brother and i making up funny and complicated names for our first-ever boxer dempsey when we were kids. i remember octavia being repeatedly slotted in there, and we would giggle uncontrollably. i also liked that it seemed to be a nice compromise between j's harsher roman suggestions, and my top 100 hits.

since then of course, her moniker has evolved. we love you little miss octavia - aka tavi baby, tavi bear, tavi-roo and t-wrecks.