36 Weeks: The Name Game

 I am now 36 weeks.  My baby is the size of a honeydew melon.  According to What to Expect, all her organs are ready to go, with the exception of her lungs, which have a little more developing to do.

Now that we are a month (give or take) away from her arrival, Aaron and I have amped up our names conversation.  No, we do not have a name chosen.  Our plan is to go to the hospital with a couple names in mind and then make the final decision once we see her face.  I think we have it narrowed down to our top 5, which is really more like a top 2-3.  We are not publicly divulging the short list . . . mostly because it entitles us to change our mind at the last minute.  I would hate to have told everyone that the baby would be named something and then they buy us something with her name on it and then when she arrives, we change our mind and have something personalized that doesn’t work.

Aaron and I have been relatively nerdy/overly analytical in our name decision-making process.  We set up a google docs spreadsheet that has a list of all the names we’ve discussed.  It has a column for the name, a column for its popularity according to the US Social Security System (and now that the new statistics have come out for 2011, another column for 2011 popularity for our favorite names, so that we can see if the name is gaining or losing popularity).  Then there is a column for the name’s meaning, and columns for Aaron and I to make notes on our thoughts on the name.  Once we eliminate a name, we mark it in red and move it to the bottom of the list.  We never delete a name because we want to be able to go back to the list and know that we discussed the name, and see our reasoning for eliminating it.  We have a separate tab for girl names and boy names because we started the list before we knew it was a girl . . . and just in case there are any surprises in the delivery room.

Girl names have been very hard for us!  For some reason we came up with our top 5 boy names super early and it hasn’t really changed at all in all this time.  (I’m almost hoping the next one is a boy – in part due the ease of choosing a name!)  I think part of the issue is that our last name ends in a “y” – so any names that end in “y” or “ie” are out, which eliminates about half the girl names out there.  Our last name also starts with “sh” so any names with a “sh” sound are out.  We were discussing names the other day and thought of Charlotte, which we loved.  We were really excited about it . . . until one of us paired it with our last name and we realized it just wouldn’t work.

We have a tab on our google doc titled “baby name tester” for exactly this purpose - where we can test out combinations of first and middle names along with our last name.  I can reveal the middle name – as I think it highly unlikely that we will change our mind on that one.  The middle name will be Grace, in honor of Aaron’s grandmother who passed away a couple years ago.  We love this name for several reasons: a) there is a family connection, b) it’s really pretty c) as a middle name, it goes with just about any first name we have tried pairing it with.

In other news, the bathroom is coming along and should be finished early this week.  I will post an entire entry complete with before and after pictures when it’s finished.  In the meantime, here is a sneak peak shot, with an excellent shot of my ginormous belly!