Happy New Baby! And, baby naming advice. Because that's what everyone wants. Naming advice from "Hummingbird Homemaker".

My sister’s baby has arrived!  She is seven pound something (the baby, not my sister) which I think is a perfect size for a baby.  Small enough to fit comfortably through the, um, arrivals gate.  If you get my metaphor in that sentence.  The metaphor was “comfortably”.

Also, seven pounds is large enough to calmly weather any weight loss of the first few weeks--which of course will be the only time in her life that she will need to worry about this issue since she is a James Family Female.  We have childbearing hips.  Also, childbearing butts, legs, and arms.  Bet you didn’t know that there was such a thing as childbearing butts, legs and arms.  Most people don’t, until they bear children.  There is childbearing everything.

It was a water birth, on a lovely day, which allowed daddy, from his position in the water behind my sister to declare “can someone get me a beer?” between contractions.  Which amused my sister.  This is lucky for daddy, because they say a baby can drown in just a few inches of water, so I’m guessing that a labouring woman with an entire birthing pool at her disposal could have finished a grown man off without breaking a sweat.

In keeping with the whole “try not to use real names on your blog” rule, I will not tell you baby’s name.  But I have to say that, if I did, you would think it was one of my fake names.  And not just because my fake names are so uncreative. 

When I named my babies, I tried to give them normal names.  Because when I was a kid, the main thing you wanted out of a name was ease of spelling and pronunciation, and not rhyming with a synonym for penis.  But times have changed.  There are way more synonyms for penis, for one thing.  And anti-bullying laws.  (Unless, of course, you are a Canadian and are bullying because of divine instruction).

If I were naming a child today, my first priority would be choosing something that wouldn’t already be taken as a user ID by various online sites.  That way, the kid could just say their name “at gmail”, instead of SuzySmith35322. 

I would use something like xkcd. 

Oh wait, that’s taken.

Comments

[Taran]

Congratulations! Is this your younger sister? (you have so many, you really should specify ;) ) seven pounds something is a very nice size... I always sorta wondered what I did wrong to get itty bitty six-pounders.

I always enjoyed my unusual name (even if no one can spell it and they always mispronounce it or think I said "Karen"). If it became a problem, I can always fall back on my middle name, but thirty some years on and that hasn't happened. My kids seem happy with their wacko names, too.

Possibly it has something to do with having wacko parents.

My husband, on the other hand, has always loathed his perfectly ordinary (but literary-referencing) name...

[Greta]

Thanks Taran for the vote of confidence. I've heard the same old pronounce and spell story myself many times, but my sister neglected to mention that another James family trait is an inability to spell...so what is the point of giving her an easy to spell name? At least this way she won't be embarrassed when the rest of the world can spell her name and she can't.