Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Naming Rights

While we won't be naming our child Hashtag, the naming of our future spawn has so far been the most difficult thing for us on a number of levels. We're running into a lot of problems, frankly, and we're still trying to figure out how to solve them.

Among the issues:

* My father's side of the family is massive. My father is the youngest of 14, 12 of them lived long enough to have children, and those children have children now. Some of those children's children have children. This means a lot of names are taken. We could duplicate names without a big problem, but who can say for sure?

* We're a little too well-read. Literally every name one of us comes up with, the other can come up with a reference to attach it to, often with hilarious consequences. We're all a little bitter that Twilight has ruined Bella/Isabella/Isobel for us, and our leading boy name right now is also the name of a child in a well-known movie and a famous author.

The reality is that we'll have to settle on something and that something will have a reference no matter what. That doesn't mean we have to like it, though, but it does help cull the list a bit.

* We're really good at girl names and really bad at boy names. We had a boy name in mind that we've since had to discard for unfortunate reasons, but the one that we have now? That's...pretty much it. And we like the name a lot, but it's one thing to like a name and another to default to it, and I don't want to feel like, if we have a boy, we've defaulted on a name. Plus, we don't have a middle name yet. Whee!

On the girl side, though, we already have a middle name (I'm being a bit of a dictator about it, and Ann's letting me have that one piece), but we have a ton of names in mind and can't really settle on just one. I have a few favorites as she does, and we've already discarded a few, such as the Isabelle Variations and Pella, which I (surprise surprise) read in a book (The Art of Fielding, if you care) and loved, but is also the name of a window company. When we mentioned the name to a few friends, they all said "like the window company?" So that's out.

(On a side note, I hope that, if we have a girl, she becomes a musician and names her band The Isabelle Variations.)

So we're not settled on anything yet. It's been a pretty funny road so far, emailing different ideas and such. We're also taking suggestions - we're looking for quirky and fun without being ridiculous and hipster. Traditional with a twist is good (Ann has a baby name site bookmarked and she spent a little more time in "Steampunk Names" than I'm ultimately comfortable with), but at the end of the day, we want our kid to have a name that will really highlight the type of kid we hope s/he'll be at the end of the day.

Otherwise, maybe we'll have to name it Hashtag after all...

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Odds and Ends

Ann had another ultrasound yesterday. I didn't go to this one, and it's probably best that I didn't, given that she wasn't terribly pleased with her technician, who took most of the measurements with the screen turned away, ostensibly so that the gender wouldn't be revealed. It means she missed out on all the fun of seeing the little guy moving around and such, and didn't get a good face photo.

It resulted in tears at Target in part due to the experience, and in part due to the fact that she apparently wanted to eat every cookie there. So on one hand, sadness. On the other, hey, cookies.

The first ultrasound was strange for me, as a lot of this has been for me so far - it's as if my job is completely done in this and now I'm just the dutiful husband who provides emotional support until the little guy decides to join us. As someone who has a "fixer" type personality, I spend a lot of time feeling helpless as all sorts of stuff goes on. I just want to hit the fast forward button a bit, but that's not how it works.

And yet we're still on the back end of this. Four more months!

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So now for some funnier stuff. Ann (and she's fine with me posting this) started lactating a few weeks ago. At first it was just a little, but she was just leaky leaky leaky putting the Christmas tree up. She plans to breastfeed, and I'm happy about that - I'm not totally convinced of the "breastfeeding is the best way period and you're setting your child up for failure if you do formula" mindset, but I think it's a good thing and I'm glad Ann agrees.

Let's be honest, though. NOTHING up to this point has grossed me out as much as this did.

I don't know if it was the visual, or just the fact that I figured that they, like, switched on following birth or something, but I assume my complete and total lack of preparation for that probably contributed to my immediate discomfort. It's something I'll get over (it's not like I have a choice), but hey.

Progress, though: I offered her a band-aid!

...

A postscript to the lactation thing: my mother wasn't too pleased with the trimming of the tree - apparently she's an Alzheimer's sufferer who hates Christmas now - but Ann was talking about reading stories where pregnant women begin lactating at the sound of babies crying, and it turns out that her body might actually just end up forming an association with my mother yelling at her.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Ann on Parenting

I haven't been neglecting this blog for any other reason than I've been super-busy the last few weeks, but Ann resent me a Facebook post she did regarding the type of parent she wants to be and some of her inspirations. It's even more relevant now, so those who missed it the first time around can take a look. I also threw it behind the jump here for those who can't see it on Facebook: