Naming

When I was a little girl, I loved reading my mom's old Bobbsey Twin Mystery books. For those unfamiliar, the Bobbsey family had 2 sets of boy/girl twins - Nan and Bert (the older two) and Freddie and Flossie (the younger two). They solved mysteries a lot.

Somehow, I got it into my head that when I got older I wanted sets of twins for my own offspring. Only I wanted THREE sets of twins - preferrably boy/girl twins - for my own family. That's right, 6 kids. Yeah.

But it was really more about the naming of said children. The names of sets 2 and 3 changed periodically and I can no longer remember what any of those choices were. But the oldest two remained the same throughout my crazy fantasy-dreams. They were the names of my parents, R and A.

I think this might have been about the time (no, the ages don't match up...) I promised my mom that my first girl would be named after her. Maybe I'd already made that promise.

Anyhow, years (and years) later, I'm incredibly grateful that I never had twins (yes, in some ways, it would have been cool, but I remember when Fuss was born being suddenly incredibly grateful that God had not given me TWO of her. I would have had a nervous breakdown. I can still vividly remember the first moments I had her all to myself (we were home from the hospital and my husband had just gone to lay down) and the dog jumped on me and nearly knocked me down with her in my arms and I started wailing "I can't do this! I'm no good at this! They're going to take her away from me!" (no idea who "they" were) - I'm sure if there had been two I would have succumbed to that a LOT earlier. And more repeatedly.

But here's the ironic thing - when we were planning the name for our 3rd child? The girl name was my mom's (with a cute nickname) and the boy name had my dad's name in it (the only thing we knew for sure was that my dad's name was going to be in it - it alternated between being the first or middle name and we couldn't seem to decide on whatever the other name was going to be... good thing we found out she's a girl!)

We announced our girl's name to the family the other night. We were so excited! We thought they'd LOVE it. (I still haven't figured out how to tell my dad his 3rd grandchild is going to have his ex-wife's name. Oops.) And other than my mom, we didn't get the reactions we were expecting. Some luke-warm to actually negative responses. (at one point when we were explaining how we came up with our choices, my one SIL started guessing and guessed the name Janelle. The next day, my MIL told my husband, "you know, I like Janelle better." That's nice. We didn't.)  I actually feel like reminding them "did it sound like we were just CONSIDERING this name or when we said 'our baby's name is: ___________________.'? Did you think we were asking for your opinion?"

Now, I have had one minor re-think on her middle name. Something one of them said to my husband was an alternative (actually, I take that back, it inspired an alternative. She actually suggested that we use a different middle name and then just flip them - so my mom's name was the middle name instead of the first name.) I hadn't yet considered and I actually like it. So now I keep going back and forth. Part of me is being stubborn. "No, we put a lot of thought and consideration into this. THIS is the name." and part of me is thinking "well, this might be better. It's a little more "fun" and different without being crazy."

My husband has left the choice up to me. His "first boy of the family" choice was set in stone even before we got married, so he figures that it's only fair that I get to make the final choice in all the rest. Especially since I'm SUCH a name-addict. I'm still struggling with the middle name.

Either way, I'm already thinking of ladybugs for some reason - sort of obsessively. And I've kind of started thinking of her as my little Ladybug. So she already has a cutesy nickname.