what's in a name?

well a lot if you ask me.  thinking and agreeing on names is hard for the husband and i.  and this is due to the fact that i'm a teacher.  don't judge.  but really it's hard to name your child the same name and a kid you've taught that may have been a total jerk.  i know that my child will not be anything like the jerky one, but it's the association.  also, because i'm a teacher i think of every possible mean thing that kids could say about a name we choose.  believe me i've heard them all.  the husband thinks this is hilarious.  sometimes he looks at me and says "seriously who would come up with that?"  my response is always "you'd be surprised."

maybe i'm so concerned with names because as a kid i was always teased because my name was so different and i was the only one with a "weird" name.  i think this is why i often just go by my initials now as an adult (mj ... which stands for mari-jane).  i love my name now for its uniqueness but as a kid it was torture.  because i had the initials mj, i would get "hey michael jackson", "does that stand for michael jordan?"  and some others that weren't that pleasant.  hindsight, i wish i were as proud of my name then as i am now.  it's unique and so am i.  this is something i hope we will instill in both of our children.  for liam i don't think it will be a problem.  in fact i think it'll be the complete opposite.  we thought we were being unique with his name.  turns so did many other parents who had baby boys in 2010 in alberta.  liam will be faced with the possibility of multiple people with the same name in his future classes.

which brings us to our current dilemma.  coming up with names for baby 2.  i think we've pretty much settled on two contenders if it's a girl.  but we cannot decide or agree on a boys name.  we didn't find out liam was a boy until he popped out.  we went into labour and delivery with a name for each gender.  we also didn't share our name choices with family or friends.  reason being we didn't want to hear "oh that's an interesting name" or "really, you're going to name them that?"  we prefer that people keep their opinions to themselves and just say how beautiful our baby is ... even if they don't approve of the name.  we hope our children love their names, who they are and grow to be.

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