Happy birthday, Sophia!

The big day has arrived - Sophia Emily Broadland (Sophie for short) was born precisely on her due date, March 28, 2007 at 6:52pm. She was 9 lbs, 1 oz, and has a fair bit of dark hair. Holly did a great job with the delivery, and we were well supported by one of our midwives, our two midwives-in-training, our doula, and Sophie's grandma, Star. (And, of course, by everyone who has been wishing us well!) We'll write more later, but for now, I can't think what else I should mention. Holly and Sophie are both doing fine, and here's a (fuzzy) picture of the newest Broadland!

Silly names for babies

So we're thinking about baby names, and looking through the vital statistics webpage on the most popular baby names for each year from 1997-2005. It shows the top 20, and then goes on to show all the names where there were more than five babies named that name during the year.

(Note: We only got through boys' names, A-M, and no, we don't know/think it's a boy. It might be. "Only your ultrasound technician knows for sure.")

It's a pretty good resource for gauging:

1. the lengths people will go to (spelling mistake-wise) to give their child a unique name (and fail, because in all the cases we saw, at least 4 other people had done the same thing):
   
   e.g. Cristian, Dakoda, Danial, Deklan, Karson, Micheal
   
   
2. the lack of understanding about nicknames in today's society:
   
   e.g. Billy, Danny, Jimmy, Joey, Johnny, Kenny
   
   Not that these aren't fine nicknames, but the people in question would actually be named: William, Daniel, Joseph, John (or Jonathan), and Kenneth. If you're going to put any of the above names on the kid's birth certificate, why not just put Sport? Or Gomer? Or Four-Eyes?
   
   
3. the (small) number of gutsy but cool parents out there:
   
   e.g. Axel, Holden, Julius, Lance

Okay, so I may have given away our top choice (Gomer), but don't let on. Hopefully, we'll be able to at least spell our child's name properly...

Tammy or Tommy?

Today I got two more name suggestions! One of my Grade 6 students came up to hand in her assignment and randomly remarked, "I've got names for you." This came out of the blue, as she hadn't said anything about me being pregnant. My first thought was, "What names? I want your reading log!" but when I asked her, she clarified and said they were for my baby. Tammy for a girl and Tommy for a boy. I assume she'd want me to use both for twins. Hmmm... I'll get Dean's opinion on this.

The Name Game

As many of you know, we will be keeping any potential baby names a secret during this pregnancy. We have been working on a list of names and were doing a bit more today. The baby was in an active mood, so we decided that kicks were votes for the names we were reading from the baby book. Unfortunately, the baby's taste in names doesn't really match our own. The three biggest kicks were for the names Fran, Bonnie-Belle and Buffy. Surprisingly, we didn't see the name Slipper listed as one of the 35,000 names in the book!

How Slipper got her/his name

This one's my fault. :)

On our honeymoon (2002), Holly and I were swimming in a salt water pool out in Tofino, having a great time. Nowhere to be and all day to get there, as the song says... Anyway, we were playing one of those games where you have to answer questions really quickly, without thinking. You know, what's your favourite kind of car?, would you rather have ice cream or pie for dinner?, what's Pauly Shore's best movie?, etc. I'm not sure why, but part of our game was ducking your head underwater, coming up, and having one of these questions fired at you. One of Holly's questions was "what's our first child's name?" to which I replied (without thinking, as the game specifies) "Slipper!" And "Slipper" the wee one has stayed.