Baby Evan totally skipped his nap yesterday and was in a state of constant meltdown from about 3 pm on so the cute baby tricks video will have to wait. Plus he learned to point to a WHOLE NEW BODY PART and you wouldn’t want to miss that.

So. Instead.

This is a list of possible girl names I’ve had saved as a draft for the past few months and am finally ready to put out there for opinions/suggestions. I kept hearing and seeing names I loved but forgot ten seconds later so I started keeping them on my WordPress dashboard. It made sense to me at the time. Our gender ultrasound is August 5th (ONE MONTH!!!1!!!!111!!) so I’ve got to start making some decisions. And thanks to my internet friend/reader Megan for pointing me towards Swistle’s Baby Names blog, where I’ve not only found some really good names but also wasted the better part of several days reading the archives.

Eloise
Louisa Mae
Louisa Jane
Natalie – born on Christmas, middle name only & only if actually born on Christmas
Jane
Caroline Louisa
Carolina Jane
Carolina Mae
Claire
Merin
Clementine
Ruth
Penelope
Eleanor
Harriet (Hattie)
Isadora (Sadie, Izzy)
Ginger

Eloise and Harriet are from the children’s books, which is my absolute favorite reason to name a kid something. I’d consider Matilda and Ramona too if I thought E would even consider them and/or celebrities hadn’t already ganked them. Or Madeline if it wasn’t so popular.

Louisa (Louise), Jane, Caroline (Carolyn, Carol), Claire (actually Klair, grandfather’s middle name) and Ruth are family names.

Merin is a friend here in Connecticut whose name I just really, really like and am considering stealing it. It’s like #4000 on the popularity list, sounds slightly nautical, and yields no weird Google results. I also stole Mae from internet friends, including my lovely commenter TMae and Mae from Parenting in Progress.

The rest of the names came from Swistle’s suggestions. I don’t think E will let me use any of them. Plus, Ginger is my BFF’s dog, although I might totally use it anyway if Baby #2 comes out with red hair.

For the record, the polite internet way to tell me you absolutely HATE a name is to say “not my style” (abbreviated NMS. Feel free to say it as much as you want to or offer up better/alternative suggestions.

In other words, HALP!!!

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Last time I’ll bug you, I swear, but voting for the BlogLuxe awards ends July 12th. You can vote every day (not that I expect you to actually vote EVERY DAY) but I sure would appreciate it if you would do it once. The link is over on my sidebar or you can just click here. I’m under the “Funniest” category. Shocking, I know, since you were totally looking for me under the “Blogs You’ve Learned the Most From” category. AHAHAHAHAHAHA.

As I mentioned before (even earlier in my pregnancy than this ridiculously early post), if Sandy ends up belonging to the hot dog half of the hamburger-hot dog population, we’ve already got a name picked out. It’s an awesome, cool, unusual, non-yet-overused, legitimately-from-my-immediate-family-not-a-third-cousin-twice-removed-in-law name.

But y’all, as much as I am TOTALLY COMPLETELY 100% IN LOVE with this name, I am skeered. Skeered people are going to think I’m a crazy person, skeered it’s a totally stupid thing to name a baby, skeered that the internet is going to mock me. I can’t even bring myself to put the name out there – not here on the blog, not on the baby message boards, not to anyone besides my parents and E’s parents and one friend I knew would understand. E actually told a few relatives a while back while I made desperate cringing “no don’t say it don’t say it DON’T” faces behind their backs. Then I ran away before anyone could react so I don’t know what they thought. I just can’t stand the thought of someone saying “Oh. Really? Are you sure?” to a name that I’ve got my heart set on.

I have no idea why this is bothering me so much. I do not live in an area where everyone calls their babies Bob or Mike or Jacob. I know Lucien, Calvin, Tristan, Reid, Brody and Gideon, all of which I would put in the same category as the name I want to use. And now that I’ve heard them 10, 20, 500 times none of those names seem even a tiny bit strange. They aren’t even “baby names” anymore – they’re just people I know, although admittedly tiny, drooling, crap-their-pants people.

My name isn’t even unheard of. I sent a totally crazy stalker Twitter direct message to a blogger who happened to mention her nephew was named my very special secret name. (I may have scared her with my craziness and/or questions.) I also freaked out when I saw MY name on a list of unusual names that are gaining popularity – and according to a few websites it’s now in the top 200 most common. I promise it’s not Heahstan or Cenwig or Kinkson or Syre or anything else from the Baby’s Named a Bad, Bad Thing collection (WARNING: That link is a giant time suck. HUGE. DO NOT CLICK unless you have several hours to waste.) I promise I’m not really a crazy person. I promise even my own mother thinks it’s a fantastic name.

I also promise to stop talking about it now until I know for sure if we even GET to use it. Because the more I stress now, the more likely this baby will end up being a girl anyways. So it won’t even matter.

And for the record, if you’re DYING to know what the name is, send me an email or a Twitter DM or something. It’s not a secret, I’m just SKEERED.

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Minor housekeeping note: I finally broke down and joined the Top Baby Blogs list almost all my internet friends are members of. Unfortunately, you need like a quadrillion votes to show up in the top 100 so I’m going to be doing a little begging self-promotion. No registration or anything required: just click on the banner below and then click on the big icon in the middle of the screen. You won’t see my button until I make it to the front page (AHAHAHAHAHAHhahahahah!! Ha.) but rest assured you made my day just by voting!

Although Baby Evan is named after his father (and grandfather), I couldn’t stop myself from picking out a few other possible names for boy children during my first pregnancy. Luckily, we don’t have a legacy to continue this time so I get to maybe use some of those choices. I’ve got a list a mile long for possible girl names but E and I have actually almost settled on another boy name – two names from my side of the family, one from my mom’s side and one from my dad’s.

Unfortunately, these two names would give Baby 2 some rather unfortunate initials. I mean, not unfortunate like A.S.S. or G.A.Y. or even D.U.M. but they almost spell something. Think of a specific type of hallucinogenic drug popular among dirty hippies during the 60’s.

There are two ways around this. One, we just name the baby what we want. How often does a guy use their initials for something? I don’t know the middle names of almost ANYONE I went to school with, except for the people who used them as their first names. Plus I don’t think these initials are terrible enough to really matter.

Our second option is just to add a second middle name. It breaks up the initials and gives him something a little bit special, which might be nice since Baby Evan has that annoying III after his name. My only problem is I really like the way the first two names sound and haven’t come up with another one I like as much.

At least, I hadn’t until my mother emailed me last week.

If you’re due Christmas day, she said, then I know how to solve the problem with the boy-name initials…

… His name should be Firstname Middlename Jesus Davis.

GENIUS.

And amen.

No, I’m still having a boy. My best friend Erin is also pregnant but doesn’t know what her bebeh is yet. She wants to have a girl name picked out just in case. We both agree that girl names are much harder – they’re either way too common or way too weird. The world doesn’t need another Jennifer or Jessica. So if you’ve been sitting on the super-special-awesome-perfect girl name and wouldn’t mind sharing, you’d be doing her a big favor.

She likes girly names better than unisex or boyish ones, and old fashioned names better than Mackenzye or Nevaeh. My suggestions were Vivian and Corinne (my middle name, because of course she should name her baby after me). The name also has to be husband-approved, and he’s kind of difficult to please. No complaining Mitch, you know it’s true.

It’s too late for me (at least as far as this baby is concerned), but this website is really fun if you’re looking for baby names: http://ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ You can search the popularity of a name and it will show you how similar names compare. You can also search for the top baby names going all the way back to 1880 (surprisingly similar to the 2007 list). For example, the year I was born my name was the 174th most popular name, but for the last 8 years it hasn’t even broken the top 1000. And don’t worry, no one will judge you for playing with it even if you have no plans to have a baby. Ever.

Also, this article has both one of the weirdest names I’ve ever heard (Folbe, a girl) and a nice snarky comment on Ashley Simpson’s horror of a baby name.

Thanks Erin!