We're naming him...

Good morning, all. I woke up this morning with a wiggly baby in my tummy. His favorite times to do baby gymnastics are at night and in the morning. These days, he gets the hiccups, and they make me smile. When I felt him waking up this morning, I thought about our ultrasound more than 10 weeks ago. It's the only one we'll get, unless I develop some sort of complication. I have a really vivid visual memory, so I remember the rooms and the screen and what we all looked like. It's kind of fun to visualize it all again. I remember my shock at finding out I was having a little boy. Now I'm totally used to the idea, so used to the idea, that we've had a name for him for weeks now. At first, I wasn't sure if we'd keep it. You're afraid to be too sure about these things sometimes. I thought, "This is really important. I should at least be willing to think about it and reconsider." So I did, and David did, but nothing better showed itself. It's an awesome and weird responsibility to name another human being. You're going to be giving them the handle they'll be called by for the rest of their lives, and depending on how well you do it, they could be in for years of embarrassed smiles. My prime example of this is Gov. Hogg who named his girls Ima and Ura. 'Nuf said. We'd had a girl name picked out for ages, but when we found out this baby is a boy, we had nothing on the drawing board for him. It was then that I found out that the criteria for boy names is quite different than the criteria for girl names, at least in the eyes of my husband. Apparently, he believed that the best, perhaps the only, names for boys were biblical names. I was stunned. I guess I shouldn't have been, since he likes his own biblical name. I didn't want something really frequently used, but I also didn't want something really different. The Bible offers some unique naming challenges here. I didn't want to have to choose between Matthew and Melchisidek. =) Well, he decided he was willing to compromise, and so did I. We hunted through name books and wrote down a list of names we were both willing to consider. But the name we ultimately came up with didn't come from the books. We have a friend with this name, and it fit both of our requirements. So, he shall be called...Seth David. We both wanted his name to mean something good, and Seth means "appointed." We wanted a name that would wear well in all circumstances, and with a name like Seth, you can either be a corporate litigator or a rock star. I didn't want anything you could nickname. It's a Biblical name to boot! Eve's third son was named Seth, and Jesus comes from his line. And a friend read me a blurb from a baby name book that made the name more meaningful for me. Eve had Seth after she'd lost Abel. In the 18th and 19th centuries, many couples would name a baby Seth if they had it after they'd lost a child. This doesn't feel morbid to me; it's a subtle reminder to me of the baby we lost last year at this time. He won't be forgotten. The middle name was a no brainer for me. I wanted to name my son after the man I hope he will always emulate. I want him to grow up to be a man like my husband, a strong man who follows the Lord and lives for Him in what he says and does. There is no man that I respect more than my David, and I want to honor him by giving our son his name. I'm glad he let me do it. So there ya have it, folks. Some may like it, some may hate it. That's inevitable. But for good or ill, this child has already been marked for life. Now, only a couple of months to go before I can give him the full name treatment when he gives me a stinky diaper! =)