Baby name(s)

Happy Monday friends!  My 3 day weekend rejuvenated me and I’m ready to tackle this week ahead.  And what’s more was that there was 3 fabulous things that happened this weekend:

1. I met Shayla from The Good Life for lunch at Pluto’s in Palo Alto followed by Pumpkin Spice Lattes from Starbucks.  This girl is awesome, amazing, faboosh, and gorgeous!  Seriously!  I think had I not had errands that had to be run, we easily could have talked past our 3 hour meet-up.  I meant to bring my camera but didn’t even think once about taking a photo, which I’m bummed about –> guess we have to meet up again, Shayla
2. I went to my friend Alice’s Baby Shower – she is due Nov 26 (Thanksgiving weekend!), and a beyond lovely shower hosted at her MIL’s.  It was nicer than some weddings I’ve been to!  I’ll try to sneak some photos on the blog later this week for sure!
3. Our friends Mojan and Ali had us over for authentic Persian food Saturday night.  I’m going to hold off on a recap here, since this should make a great WIAW!  Let’s just say it was go-od!

Okay, moving on to the topic of the day: Baby names.

Oye!  Either this is a headache / argument / nightmare or it’s easy as pie since you’ve had the name in mind since you were playing with your dolls as a wee little one. 

We fell in the middle actually.  We had started thinking about names well before we knew the gender and I was convinced we had  a solid boy’s name.  It was a girl that would be trouble, but just a week before the 18 week ultrasound, our girl’s name came to us: Adeline Grace.  I loved it.  Still love it!  Addy for short.  Perfection! 

Until we saw this:

(You thought I was going to show you the goods again, didn’t ya? )

It’s a boy!  Err okay so we’ll just go with the name I have loved, right?  Wrong.  Apparently Zach had some hang-ups about possible nicknames which he didn’t like.  Argh.  Okay, so we’ll brainstorm, right?  Easier said than done.

About a month ago, I threw another name into the mix, which the hubby loved. Loved loved loved.  But still he wanted to do ‘research’ – what does that mean?

We decided to peruse some baby name books a few weeks back on a Saturday and actually learned a lot!

• Did you know that there are baby books that tell you all the ways to make fun of your baby name?  I loved looking through these.  You’ll be happy to know my name was not in that book (guess they missed the ‘Shanna Banana fee fi fo fanna, SHA-NNA’ jingle).
• Max is the number 1 name in America….for a dog.
• We came across a number of names for our next dog – Thurman tops the list (even if it’s a girl – ha).
• They have a great book polling people’s inputs on initial reactions to baby names.  For instance, we loved the name Jaxson (Jax for short), but apparently people first think of this name as a gentle older black man.  Hmm, that won’t work.

That’s just some of what we learned

Okay so let’s go over some names we did not choose…

Max – see above.  It’s a dog’s name apparently.  Sigh.

Leo – what is his full name?  Leopold?  Leonardo?  Too complicated.

Jaxson – again, see above.  Sad to see this one go, but apparently it’s getting really popular.

And finally… the name that I loved that we’re not naming Baby Boy O:

Liam – my heart breaks a little.  I love this name.  Adore it.  <3 it.  BUT, Babycenter.com says it is the #2 name for boys in 2011.    Darnit all  to heck.  Oh well, not meant to be. 

FYI, one of the best sites for baby names is the Social Security website where you can find accurate accounts of most popular baby names by year and state. 

Have I gone on and on enough?  Do you want to know our baby boy’s name?

Well…

We are naming Baby Boy O

Sawyer Clark Owens

And we are in love with it  

Zach informed me that part of the reason he was so enamored was because one of his favorite characters on Lost had the same name.  Go figure   Dork. 

And there ya go, that’s our baby boy’s name and we’re happy to share it with everyone so we can get the world pre-introduced to our little man. 

Have you thought about baby names?  Share!

Have you ever wanted to change your name?  I actually like mine, although when I was very young, I did want to be called by my middle name (Michelle) – my Mom didn’t go for this