Finally!

I think we may have finally decided on a boy name and a girl name! Thank goodness because I was starting to get worried that we would be calling this baby, well "baby", for the first couple weeks of his/her life.

We have some very specific criteria that needs to be met regarding names. I want a name that is easy to pronounce and spell (that's the teacher in me!). But, I didn't want it to be a name that five other kids in the kindergarten class shared (like Ethan ... a nice name, but also a very popular one). The name must have two syllables - one syllable names sound funny with our last name. Sandy's main issue is that the name is "cool" enough and isn't easy to twist into a terrible nickname.

So, with all that in mind, we began the name hunt! For a while, we liked the name Breanna, but then I taught at Vanier one day. In the three English classes that I taught, there were eight Breanna's ... all spelled differently! So, that name was crossed off the short list. We liked the name Andrew, but soon realized it would be shortened to Andy .... doesn't sound so bad, right? Well, imagine "Sandy" introducing his son, "Andy" ... a little too matchy-matchy, I think! I liked the name Carter, but then all I could think of was calling the little boy "Carter the Farter"!!! (very mature, I know :) We went through this situation with many, many names and various reasons they wouldn't work.

But, like I said, I think we have finally found one name for each sex that we can both live with. Of course, I am not going to share them with you quite yet! When we were trying out other names, I would ask friends and family what they thought and they would tell me!!! I truly appreciated their honesty, but it has taken us so long and so many names to find these ones that we like, that I don't actually want to know if someone doesn't like it. When the baby is here, I think it will be a lot tougher for someone to actually say, "Oh, I don't like his/her name".

I will share this information with you though. Both our girl name and our boy name are of Gaelic origin; they were both popular around 1910, so they seem unique without being too "out there"; they are shorter names, but have two syllables; and they both have really nice meanings.

(Middle names were decided on long ago. If the baby is a girl, her middle name will be Elizabeth and if the baby is a boy, his middle name will be John.)