Just don't call me late for dinner

More than any other part of having a baby, naming always weighs heavily on my mind. Everything else I am pretty chill about. You can't control gender, wether baby may or may not be born with complications, and the biggest of all: when baby will come! Too much to stress about if you ask me. But picking a name? Geez. I always have this secret fear that we will choose the name, tell everyone and then completly end up hating it once the baby is here. To be honest I had serious doubts the first 24 hours of her life that Em was really an Emma. Obviously I got over it :) I remember thinking though that I wished we hadn't told people our names so that if we wanted to adjust last minute we would be free to do so. I didn't follow my own advice with Eli, but he was Mr. E from day one so it worked out. This time around we are definitely keeping the name a surprise! I think it will be so fun.

At the moment, Ricky is going to be finding out the gender. I am on the fence still about knowing. And yes, he will be able to keep it from me and everyone else...he's just good like that. In the evenet that I do decide (in a moment of hormonal weakness) that I HAVE to know then he will have some special way of telling me (really that's the biggest reason I want to find out. I think it would be so cute to see what he comes up with to surprise me).

It's so funny to get different family memeber's reactions to hearing that **gasp** they won't be involved in the naming of our child. "What if it's a dumb name?" " What if everyone hates it once you tell us?" Those at the moment are my two favorite arguments against the secrecy :) They all seem to be okay with not knowing the gender because, well obviously they already know what baby is. But not telling them our name choices? That is too much! The really stubborn part of me loves it.

This time around our middle name choices were a breeze. I think we actually decided them before I was even pregnant! Obviously if we end up loving a name that doesn't work with our middle choice we will change it. But I am 99% positive we have them nailed down. They are both taken from family memebers and for different reasons will both be really special

First names have proved more challenging but I think we may be getting close. Our favorite boy name wasn't too difficult. I won't say it's for sure but unless something really grabs our attention I think we have a winner. We have 2 girls names that we both really like, but we are still leaving the field open. I'm still trying to decide if I love that way our number 1 choice flows. Its totally one of those oldey but goodies that could work...or flop. Have you ever perused the list of "E" names in a baby book? 80% of them are just ridiculous and the other 15% are so outdated (not in the new "hip" way) that I just couldn't do that to a child. That leaves a pretty slim 5% to choose from! We aren't dead set on having an "E" name. But my theory is that if we don't choose another "E" then this third child will be the convict hoodlum who reflects, "It all began when my parents didn't love me enough to choose an "E" name..."

Overly dramatic? Always.

The worst part is that we didn't intend to start this whole band wagon in the first place. We fell in love with the name Eli. After thinking about it for a few months we announced it to the fam and then realized what we had started. See, once again telling the name in advance bites us in the butt.

So, who knows. This baby may end up continuing the streak...or we may end up with Emma, Eli and Paisley. And you'll have to wait unitl August to find out if I am serious about that one or not!