“What’s in a name?”

I just titled a blog post with a Shakespeare quote.  Does that make up for the bad grammar, cruddy punctuation, and REALLY bad spelling I am about to use multiple times in this post?  Anyway…

I’m not exactly sure how I came up with the name Cooper.  I just liked it.  We had it narrowed down to three choices… Cooper, Carson, & Carter.  We had no middle name (Otey picked Dawson at the hospital while I was in labor).  I remember that we had just found out that we were having a boy and we went to Pottery Barn Kids in Kansas City so that I could buy the boy bedding I had circled in the catalog months before and as we were leaving with our bags full of loot Otey said “I think this stuff looks like a kid named Cooper would have it in his room.”  And that was that… his name was Cooper.

Grady… that was an entirely different ballgame.  I stressed and worried from the time I found out he was a boy until the day I went in to labor about Grady’s name.  I LOVED the name Cooper, and I wanted my 2nd born to have a name I LOVED too.  Problem was… there weren’t any.  My sweet husband on the other hand was not worried about it at all.  By the end he was so sick of hearing we stress about it that we hardly discussed it.  About a week before I had Grady, I sat up one night and read through the “Top 1000 baby boy names of 2007″.  That is where I located Grady… somewhere around 800-ish.  I couldn’t wait to tell Otey about it the next morning and his reaction was a little less than what I had hoped for.  I think it went something like “it’s okay”.  Every time I mentioned a new name there were two responses I came to expect during the nine months prior to Grady’s delivery… “It’s okay.” or “I hate it.”  So that day, I posted this blog post hoping that my loyal blog readers would help me out.  You all voiced your opinions… but it did me no good.  Poor baby vs. 2.0 still had no name.

Now… fast forward a week and I am in induced labor in Ottumwa Regional Hospital with a husband by my side that is EXTREMELY worried that I am about to have his child… his nameless child.  If he said it once he said it fifty times “What are we going to name this baby?”.  As you can probabley imagine, even with my epidural in full swing, after nine months of stressing about a name… at this point I could have cared less if we named him Donald Duck.

When Grady finally arrived it was late that evening.  Just Otey and I were there and we deicded to call my Mom at our house and tell her to just wait until morning to bring Cooper to meet him.  That night when we finally got settled in to our new room and I was ready to finally get some sleep, Otey said “Kathy… what are we going to name this baby?  He has to have a name.  Cooper can’t meet him until he has a name”.  I layed there still enjoying my drug induced comfort and got a tiny but of pleasure (sorry Otey) from the panic in his voice.  I wanted to name him too, but for the first time in nine months Otey was REALLY worried about it.  He mentioned Grady and Max again… and I brought up Nate, and than I drifted off to peaceful slumber with my little no-named baby in his rolling bed beside me.  That next morning I woke to Otey declaring that he wanted to name him Grady.  At this point I wasn’t near as comfortable as I was the night before and discussing baby names was not helping.  Cooper would be there soon… my poor husband was sure this baby would need counciling his enitre life from the 12 hours he had went without a name… so for the sake of everyone’s sanity… Grady it was.  And you know what?  I LOVED it.  I must admit I forgot it about eight times that day… but I LOVED it.

That brings us to baby vs 3.0.  We hope to have him named by Christmas so I have at least a month to remember the poor kids name.  Like I mentioned in the last post… I AM A PLANNER.  Things need monogrammed… I need to wrap my head around the new name so I don’t have to feel guilty for forgetting it eight times the first day of his life.  I just went through the top 1000 baby boys names of 2008 (you can find this info on the Social Security Webpage) and here is the list I narrowed it down to after applying all my naming rules.  They are listed alphabetically, and the number out to the left is their ranking from 1-1000 of all the baby boys born in the US last year.  So… the smaller the number, the more babies that have that name.  If there is a “X” beside the name, it didn’t make the top 1000.  When looking at that number overly obsessive planning mothers like myself have to take in to consideration names like Nate.  Nathan has been in the top 30 for the past eight years, so even though Nate didn’t make the top 1000…. there are a pot load of “call him Nate for short’s” out there.

714    Ace
90      Blake
840   Bo
X        Brant
202   Braxton
277   Brock
833   Brogan
601   Brooks
116    Bryce
839   Dale
350   Dane
594   Davin
766   Dax
244   Drew
31      Dylan
76     Hayden
358   Holden
880   Houston
37     Isaac
692   Jax
X        Knox
319   Lane
212   Lincoln
19      Logan
208   Maddox
35      Mason
126    Max
688    Memphis
681    Nash
X         Nate

X        Pace
422    Paxton
415    Reece
799    Rex
678    Rhett
928    Slade
872    Sterling
433    Tate
508    Trace
312    Trent
316    Trey
247    Ty
816    Van
765    Vance
846    Vaughn
884    Zack

Didn’t the stork used to bring the baby with his name already written neatly on the little tag?  Why can’t it be that simple?

Sidenote… for all you long time blog readers out there… there will be photo posts coming soon!  Now hurry up and name this baby so we can return to our regular programming!