The Naming Game

We have some name issues. The names I like and the names J likes are not that different, and yet they do not overlap, especially for girls. We decided to give friends and family a chance to weigh in on our name ideas.

(Not our idea, see Name Madness And if you like name trivia and trends, this entire website The Baby Name Wizard Voyager is really cool. And the blogger, Laura Wattenberg has the only baby name book I've ever absolutely adored and found absolutely helpful, The Baby Name Wizard. End endorsement.)

So friends and near acquaintances and family are weighing in on names that we do and don't care about. (We started with 32 boy names and 32 girl names. If you can come up with 64 names you can genuinely imagine naming your child, you have a very generous imagination.)

Last week, J was told in detail, by a kind woman why we shouldn't name a boy XXX. XXX will be made fun of in school. XXX will be constantly embarrassed by this. Mid conversation, another woman passed by and leaned in and said, XXX is the only! name we should use for a boy.

We found that pretty funny. What's even more amusing, is that I think that made us like the name more. XXX will not be in elementary school indefinitely. And we can help avert the embarrassment by explaining to XXX what his name means so that he's psyched about the association. I think it's entirely possible that this helped us unite under a boy name. (We don't like very many boy names. Some are lovely, fine names, just not well matched with our older child, and/or, just not names we can really imagine naming our own child. Names we'd love to meet on a kid though!)

What I find additionally amusing is that a close friend was ranting about why YYY is a bad name for a girl, or anyone for that matter. My reaction here was not suddenly decide that I really did like this name, as I did with XXX. Instead I'm torn between defending our consideration of YYY, and wanting to write it off because it's just not one of my favorite names for a girl anyways.

I find this heartening. Although I really enjoy the input from friends and family, I mostly just want to weed out the total dud names that hormones persuade you are a good idea. I want to still follow my heart and fall in love with the name of our future child.

Swimming With Dolphins

Several weeks ago - mid week 11 of the pregnancy - my body tried to persuade me that I was feeling the little larvae moving. I was pretty skeptical, and sure enough, larval movement failed to repeat. Which reminds me of a comment I heard, "Being pregnant is like the worst case of the flu you've ever had." (Sorry, not sure if Cygknit said it first, or if she was quoting.)

This morning, mid week 14, I dreamed I felt the baby moving under my hand, like you imagine reaching into a dolphin tank and feeling them pass by, all smooth, gentle muscle and then gone. It took a while to wake up enough to realize that while it was a lovely dream. At this point in the pregnancy, the fetus is approximately 6 skinny inches long and not really capable of global movements. With enough sleep, I'm usually more skeptical.

But after lunch, the little Melvin did a flutter kick hello. Nothing painful or exciting, just enough to make me blink in acknowledgement. Oh! Well, there you are. Enjoyed the soup, eh?