i don't believe a rose would be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage...

I know it and you know it, but I still have to say it. I’ve been so lazy lately. That’s the only excuse I have. Pure and simple laziness. I’d like to tell you I’ve been busy touring Rome or learning to make bouillabaisse but no - just been too lazy to post anything on here. And I’m going to go ahead and blame the baby for this laziness. Child isn’t even born yet and she already saps all my energy.

All I want to do is lay on the couch, watch Top Chef and eat potato chips in mass qualities. Which I can’t even do right now because I recently found out I have gestational diabetes. No more stuffing of the face with carbs. (Oh the lovely carbs!)

That’s right, throw another log on the raging inferno that’s been my pregnancy: morning sickness for 6 months, allergies exploding all over my face, a bacterial stomach infection that forced me to live on the toilet for 10 days and ended in an eventual trip to the ER. (Yeah, remind me to tell you how much fun that was sometime.)

And now diabetes.

I swear, there must be some kind of memory loss associated with pregnancy otherwise all women would remember how hard the “being pregnant” part was and never want to do it again. Ever. And I’ll freely admit I was one of those snobbishly superior non-pregnant women who thought pregnancy would be a breeze and all the real pain would start at childbirth.

Ha.

Ha ha aha ha.

Remind me again who that woman was when *Thumper’s foot has been lodged in my kidney for 6 hours straight. Oh the agony! Oh the inability to sit, stand or lie down! Is it a 900lb moose rampaging across my rib cage? Nope. Just a baby the size of our bunny reminding me I’m not the center of the universe. I still wonder why the mother’s of the world don’t go around slapping the rest of us upside the head while screaming “Just you wait! It WILL happen to you!”

But even all of these physical ailments can’t compare to the mental agony of choosing a name for our child. And it’s definitely not a shared agony. I’m the one agonizing over it. Jason says he’s fine with whatever I chose as long as I don’t name her Shanaynay. And I'd be fine with that but for one thing. I remember being a child of the 80s and being EXTREMELY grateful that my parents hadn’t named me Jennifer or Jessica. Everyone remembers that ONE name from school that every child seemed to have, leaving the roll call to be filled with initials -

Mike C....... Here.
Mike W
Jessica R
Jessica M
Jen
Jenny
Jennifer

On and on it went. And although I know that every girl, at some point in her life, wishes her parents had seen fit to name her something else, like Shanaynay, I don’t want her to be the “Jenny” in her class.

So I agonize, make lists and pour over name websites. I even have the Social Security Administration name page bookmarked. If you haven’t seen it, you really should check it out.

I will probably still be agonizing over it in 10 weeks when they lay my baby girl on my chest and want me to fill out the birth certificate. If all else fails, Shanaynay Hunter has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?


*This might end up being her name if I can't come up with anything else!