What’s in a name?
This coming Tuesday the baby will be 11 weeks old so the time is near for us to start telling our friends and family that we are having a baby. I am sure the excitement that we are actually having a baby (most of our friends and family have likely given up any hope that we would ever have a child) will quickly give way to the questions that I guess are standard issue for people having a baby. Chiefly, “Boy or a girl?” Followed closely by “Do you have a name picked out yet?”
It goes almost without saying, but we both want to know the gender of our baby before the birth. The idea of a dad running down the halls of a hospital handing out cigars because his wife just gave birth to a baby boy in front of a room full of doctors, nurses, and technicians has given way to very intimate sessions with ultrasound technicians and nurses who draw lots of blood. Not to mention, I guess, that the mother can actually fully appreciate knowing the gender with the same level of lucidity that the father has and at the same time. All in all, we think this makes for a more fair way not only to us and the baby, but also to the friends and family who want to know.
We like to pretend that knowing the gender of the baby will allow us to be better prepared to address the needs of the newborn. ‘Cause, you know, the baby really cares if it has pink or blue walls. Or a stuffed Dora or a stuffed Barney - or whatever the current cool stuffed toys are - which I suppose I will be an expert on in the very near future.
However, our primary reason for wanting to know the gender of the baby is that it immediately cuts the list of potential names about in half. And considering we aren’t really keen on ambiguous names, it probably cuts the list even more so. Which, hopefully will gets us to the answer to the second question above much quicker. Or maybe not, since both of us are prone an extremely methodical and precise level of problem solving… I mean procrastination.
The truth is, both of us have what we consider to be great names. At the time of my birth, my name was relatively obscure compared to its use today. It always surprises me when I am in the grocery store and an attractive woman starts calling my name only to find out she is calling for her five year old boy to stop playing with the boxes of cereal. Come to think of it, maybe she is talking to me.
Baby’s Momma (BM) has an even more unusual name than mine, but it is not uncommon today to hear of a handful of people who share her first name. In school, neither of us really had many if any other people in school that shared our first names and I think both of us like the idea of trying to find a name that would allow our baby to have the same experience.
However, let me say for those who are worried about how obscure we might get, that we don’t want a name so unusual that it draws undo attention to the child. Mostly, we want a name that people will consider normal yet slightly unusual.
Now, having said all of that, the truth is we have no idea about what names we want to consider and what names are off the table. And who knows, maybe the mood will strike us and we will select the same name as half the kids on our block :) But, you can rest assured that once we have a name picked out, we will let everyone know.
Baby’s Daddy (BD)
![[del.icio.us]](http://opensourcekids.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://opensourcekids.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Google]](http://opensourcekids.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[LinkedIn]](http://opensourcekids.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/linkedin.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://opensourcekids.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Windows Live]](http://opensourcekids.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](http://opensourcekids.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
![[Email]](http://opensourcekids.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!