Half of the Choices

Half of the choices of names for the baby have been eliminated (theoretically). We learned on Thursday, January 17th that we will be having a grandson. Seeing the proof in ultrasound pictures, we all laughed, hugged and began planning all the wonderful times we will have with "our" boy.

We celebrated with his parents and paternal grandmother, Meme. Meme just announced her name preference on that night as well. So, three out of five people needing new names have made their choices. A considerable amount of time was spent at dinner trying on and discarding potential options for the baby's name, much to the chagrin of his mother and father. I am sure they would prefer not to hear our ideas, but I guess it is a part of the process. We took a picture of this event which I was hoping to post here, but I don't know how to get the picture from the camera to my computer. Perhaps someone will teach me. I hope to join the computer literate before the baby is old enough to be embarrassed.

When I was pregnant with our daughter, we lived in California. We were far from family or friends who might insinuate their views. During the pregnancy we called the baby Roscoe (a family name) which we thought of as a funny nickname. In reality, we only had two names in mind and the baby would be one or the other. It would be John for his father and grandfather if it was a boy and Natalina for her great grandmother. Natalina was born on October 1, 1979, and is the mother of our grandson to be born in June.

She left the hospital with NMN (no middle name) which I don't recommend because when we finally choose Suzanne for her godmother, I had to have her birth certificate amended.

She wasn't the first grandchild on either side of the family so the grandparent naming dilemma had already been addressed. She had granny and granddaddy and Anma and Pa-pa. The hyphen in Pa-pa became critical because her father became Papa.

Her father's name was chosen from a very old cartoon we had seen called Owl Jolson. A parody of the Al Jolson story that included singing owls. This is typically how we make these kinds of decisions, from some random sighting or event that we find funny in our warped way.

It is in this same way that we have developed a secret language known only to the three of us until recently when our daughter began teaching it to her husband. We will have to include the baby in our circle of trust as soon as it is able to understand the idiosyncrasies of the language.