When I found out that I was going to be a parent, the emotions you’d expect to arise were definitely present: excitement, joy, nervous, love, etc. Along with those emotions came a certain set of expectations. In other words, there were things I knew would happen. I knew that there would be diapers. I knew there would be crying. I knew there would be an immeasurable amount of joy.
On the flip side to that, as my experience of being a parent carried on, other things happened that I never would have expected. One of those things is becoming friends with the parents of my daughter’s friends (I’ll let that sink in for a second for you)….
When Turner started attending her day care as a 5 month old, we didn’t have any detailed interaction with any other parents of the babies in her class. The only interaction we had was with the teachers and the day care staff. As she progressed throughout the day care rooms and started talking (full sentences), she would tell us about her friends in her class. Names like Avery, Ava (who we’ll talk more about later), Haley, Clay, Aaron, Jordan, Allie, and of course, Kylee came part of our daily conversations.
(Discovery Point, Cumming, GA)
The more we heard about Turner’s friends, the more aware of their parents we became. We would chit-chat with these parents when picking up our kids. We’d talk about the silly things our kids said the night before or the funny comparisons between them. These chit-chat sessions would lead to play dates…and ultimately, great friendships.
One of the friendships Jill and I gained was with Lauren, the mom of Turner’s friend Ava. Lauren is a super-cool single mom with an amazing sense of humor. She owns and operates First Impressions 3D/4D Ultrasound Experience…a service we took full advantage of while Jill was pregnant with Sydney. She’s an incredibly skilled and knowledgeable ultrasound technician (for lack of a better word) and I HIGHLY recommend using her service if you’re expecting. (PLUG)
Lauren’s second child, the sickeningly cute Parker, was born just a couple days after Sydney in July of 2010. When Lauren announced that she was pregnant with Parker, she made it very clear that the sex of the baby would be revealed, but the name would remain a tightly kept secret until the baby was born. Fair enough.
So, rather than calling this unborn child “the baby” or some other non-name, she decided to refer to the baby as “Clementine”. Cute, right? I thought so.
Fast forward to earlier this week. Lauren announced that her and her boyfriend Ricardo (Parker’s daddy) were expecting. Yes, a THIRD child! After letting Lauren know that I she’s a little bit crazy (an observation she agreed with), I extended my warmest congratulations. It really is great news and I couldn’t be happier for her. But yeah, she’s a little crazy.
Fast forward (again) to tonight. I told Lauren that I wanted to choose the “fake name” for her third child…and that I would do it in blog form….which brings me to the point of all of this rambling.
The following lists are names that I openly and humbly suggest that Lauren use as “fake names” for her next bundle of joy. They are in no particular order and hold no real significance other than the fact that I think they’re cool. I will limit my list to 10 names per gender:
Fake names for a BOY:
Aaron (duh)
Boris
Chester
Alfred
Trey (3rd child, duh again)
Maxwell
Hollywood
Chadwick
Sparky
Oswald
Fake names for a GIRL:
Delorean
Natasha
Clementine 2.0
Enid
Shortcake
Azalea
Pumpernickel
Jelly Bean
Skittles
Lorraine Bates
Okay, so that’s my set of suggestions. To be clear, I am in no way suggesting that ANY of these names become the ACTUAL name of the child. These are just suggestions for TEMPORARY names. And just suggestions at that.
So…what’ll it be? That remains to be seen. This was just my $.02.
