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So I'm in my 25th week of this here pregnancy and we still have no idea what gender this Mystery Baby will be. Thus I've been thinking a lot about names lately. If it turns out to be a boy, the name is pretty much decided on already (at least if you ask me). On the other hand, if it's a girl, I'm close to concluding it may never have a name. Well, at least maybe not the day it gets here. If we do pick any of the names currently in the running, I'm not sure she would ever forgive us for giving her a name nobody can spell; a name she might not even be able to spell until she's got a couple of years of school under her belt. On the other hand, as I quickly learned after Husband and I got married, she'll spend all of her unmarried life having to spell her last name for people anyway (yes, that's a 'Y' not an 'I') so what's one more un-spellable name?

I'm a fan of the name Ava, but there's already an Ava in the family - even if she is a third cousin who lives on the other side of the country and whom I've met all of once. I also really like the name Avery. But what if the girl turned out to be really short? How much would kids make fun of a short kid whose name means 'Elf Ruler' (I know I would)?? Rory is another cool name, but the likelihood of any child of ours being born with red hair is slim. Then there are traditional names like Sarah and Megan that I like (and incidentally when I was young, I was friends with two sisters named Sarah and Meghan), but Sarah just seems too plain (and in our case, not tall) and Megan has too many spelling/pronunciation variations to sift through - as in the case of the aforementioned friend Meghan whose name I had constant problems spelling and I'm still not sure I've got it right.

A couple of months ago, some friends of ours had us over for dinner one night and we played a rousing game of Scattergories after dessert. When the game was over, Wendy decided to invent a new game called 'Name Bren & Husband's Baby,' using the letter die from the game. Suffice to say, with suggestions like Enrique and Pedro, we will not be going back to those friends for real suggestions. So here's your chance. Unlike my Dream Interpretation Contest (which is going on official hiatus until I have a dream worthy of sharing and because of such decidedly underwhelming response*), this is not a contest and you won't actually win any privilege of naming the Mystery Baby. You will, however, get to offer any and all suggestions - serious or otherwise - for our general amusement.

As a bit of interesting but useless trivia for you, I had asked a friend for name suggestions a couple months ago. She already knew the pick for a boy's name, but it was almost creepy when her two suggestions for girls names were exactly the two at the top of our list. Hm...I wonder if between her teaching, prep, grading, and running schedule, she's also a hacker??

*My cousin is still bugging me that I never posted a winner, so I'll tell you today that I think it will have to officially be a tie since there were only two submissions (seriously, you people....). KB wins on the more serious, thought-provoking level and Cousin C wins on the preposterous, politically-inspired level. So hooray for winners; give yourselves a pat on the back!

** Is it pathetic that I wrote all this about names and then posted it without giving it a title? Oi vey, woman. Oi vey!