What's in a name?

If you haven't heard, baby Bagel is ... a GIRL ... maybe.  The only thing we're sure of about Bagel is that he/she is uncooperative and would not let the doctor get a good shot of the parts that are important when determining gender.  So, the doctor offered up a guess (based, I'm guessing, on NOT seeing some particular equipment) that Bagel is a girl with 90% certainty.  Luckily, she also offered to throw in a freebie ultrasound to double-check at our next appointment.  The doctor also said that she's relatively sure she's right, but (GRANDMOTHERS PAY ATTENTION HERE) not to go out any buy any pink stuff just yet, because there's definitely a chance that the next ultrasound might turn up some evidence to the contrary. 

Now that the gender question is close to being settled, everyone wants to know about names.  So, were just going to come out and tell everyone - WE'RE NOT TELLING.  Why?  Pretty much the only unanimous unsolicited advice we have received from our friends is to keep the baby's name to ourselves until the baby is born.  Our friend Joe gave this advice best - it involved many emphatic hand gestures and the use of the phrase "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD" at least three times.  His point was basically that before the baby is born, everyone is going to have an opinion on the name of your baby - probably negative.  You will hear things like "I hear that X is the most common name for serial killers", "A kid named X stole my lunch money in the third grade", "I got a great lap dance by someone named X once", etc, etc, etc.  However, once you have an adorable baby and present it with its given name, nobody and I mean NOBODY is going to bring up their stolen lunch money or tell you that with a name like that your bundle of joy is going to grow up to be the best tipped stripper in  the club (just like nobody is going to tell you that your baby isn't really all that adorable).

We considered this advice and decided it seemed pretty wise.  Also, it allowed us some flexibility in case we decided to change our minds about the baby's name.  We then had many (I'm sure many more than Jeremy would have liked) conversations about what to name Bagel (other than Bagel).  After a while, we decided on a girl name and a boy name that we both really liked.  In fact, we were particularly fond of our girl name.  BUT, then ... we did the unthinkable ... we did not follow Joe's advice.  We let the names slip.  The inevitable happened.  Our carefully chosen girls name got TRASHED.  Trashed to the point where we couldn't really use it any more.  By someone who we thought would actually be touched by the reasoning we used to select the name in the first place.  At the time, we still weren't sure about the gender, so we clung to the fact that our boy name was still (relatively) untarnished and we were probably not going to need a girl name anyway.  And then we got the ultrasound. Joe, we will never doubt you again.  If you tell us that the best sleeping position for a baby is upside down like a bat, we will immediately purchase bungee cords and make it so.  You are a wise, wise man. 

While we most certainly will not tell you what we're planning on naming Bagel, we will tell you what we are NOT naming Bagel.  We are not naming our baby girl Maxine.  We originally chose Maxine because we thought it did a great job of honoring both of our families.  My grandmother is Maxine, and Jeremy's great-grandfather was Max (which is what we were going to call her as a nickname - although Jeremy did at one point argue that it would be cooler to call her Mad Max).  We both liked the name, we thought a girl called Max wasn't going to get any static on the playground, and we looked forward to telling her stories about her families and how they both contributed to her name.  Then, we accidentally told some folks about our plan (the part where we did not listen to Joe).  It turns out Max Gottlieb was a real SOB, nobody liked him, you don't want to name your kid after him, etc etc etc.    While we were hoping that both of our families would eventually tell Bagel about where her name came from, we were not envisioning those conversations involving quite so much use of the word "jerk". 

So, we are back to the drawing board for a girl name.  Luckily, there's an app for that.  Seriously, we downloaded an iPhone app of baby names.  Every night while we're brushing our teeth and getting ready for bed, we go through a few more pages of baby girl names and we're keeping a list of names that we both find acceptable. We'll wait until after the next ultrasound and if the gender gets confirmed we'll narrow down to a few contenders and will probably put off the final decision until Bagel is born - unless we find something else that we both really, really like which hasn't happened yet.  At least we're having lots of laughs making fun of some of the ridiculous baby names out there, and even more laughs making fun of each others' selections.  Jeremy thinks I tend to like "old lady names" and has unequivocally outlawed any name including the letters "wyn".  I think Jeremy tends to pick names that belong to women who in middle age still shop in the juniors section and dot their "i"s with hearts.  But I'm sure we'll find something we both like, if we don't our fallback name is "George Foreman" :)

So, I guess the moral of the story is LISTEN TO JOE.  Although, his other piece of parenting advice was that as a guy, it is best to have all girl children because then when you get in the minivan, you can turn around and say "hellllll-oooooo ladies", so, you know, the jury might still be out on that one.