What's in a name?

I don't know if other families out there find it easy to name their babies, but for B and I this process has involved two rounds of months-long testing, trying, researching, shortlisting, trying again, and finally, throwing caution to the wind and choosing!

We wanted to name this baby as soon as possible, so T could learn the name and begin to associate the bump of mommy's tummy with the real, live, baby that will be hanging out in her house (a lot), come November. It still took us eight of this little guy's 9-10 months' inside to decide! And now that she knows, trying to keep it a secret until the birth has become futile.

The process to choose a name was made a little more complicated by the first and middle name we chose for T, honoring her two maternal grandmothers. We found ourselves in a complicated bargaining process - how to choose a name from each family, reversing the order of lineage that we used for T to be fair, keeping the second middle and last names to be the same for our nuclear family, and maybe, just maybe, fitting in a name that we really liked just in and of itself. All without burdening this little guy with a string of monikers so long he would have to risk committing fraud every time he filled out an official document.

So what is it already?!

;-)

Early on I fell in love with the name Noah. I don't know any Noah's personally but those I know of and hear of are sweet and caring, living up to their name's meaning: restful, comfort.

Which just left the middle name. After wrestling for ages with other family names that we also liked, I woke up one morning, turned to B and asked, what do you think about your name? Neither of us had ever suggested this, and B immediately choked up. That solidified it, leading us to start/continue a family tradition to give the first boy's father's name as a middle name (as B has).

It's now wonderful to be calling him by his name. T loves saying it, and telling anyone and everyone who will listen about her "baby brudder, Noah!" She especially likes talking to him when he's kicking (aka trying to stretch out my poor stomach for more space in these last few, increasingly cramped weeks!).

We can't wait to meet you, Noah.