Baby Name Remorse...

I know you all know what buyers remorse is...but how about baby name remorse? If you do a Google search for "Baby Naming Regret" you will get 402,000 hits. "Baby Name Regret" brings back 102,000. This must happen more than we think....

When Nathan and I brought Amelia home from the hospital I told him I kind of wished we had named her Rowan (her middle name). It was a small conversation then forgotten. It was brought back up when she was about 4 months old and we decided against it because we thought people might think it was weird if we suddenly started calling her by another name. Thing is---we never call her Amelia. Its always Sweet Pea (thanks to Grandpa Diffee!), Shmoopie, Boop Boop (Nathans favorite) and Baby. I think I have called her Amelia to her face maybe 4-5 times. Nathan has never called her by her name. So...this week after hearing the one MILLIONTH person saying "Oh, I know 3 or 4 babies her age named Amelia..." the conversation came up again.

The main reasons are this:
1) We don't think Amelia suits her. It is a lovely name, but it is fancy and "big". Our sweet girl is silly and falls on her face without crying...Amelia seems like a girl who always wears pink and has perfectly groomed nails *lol*
2) It is hard to say. Amelia does not flow off the tongue well and I think that is part of the reason I never say it. (Speech impediment much??)
3) Going by a middle name is a family tradition! My brother and nephew and grandmother all go by another name.
4) We just keep going back to Rowan.

I don't want to feel like we made a mistake when she is 4 years old, when it will be too late. All the articles Ive read say if you are going to do it it needs to be before the baby is 1 year old. (hello, thats 4 months away!) She doesn't answer to Amelia at all. I just tried it and she continues to play with books she pulled off the shelf. Now Ill try a nickname...Boop Boop does the trick! We think we call her by so many nicknames because we just don't like calling her Amelia. So....Rowan it is. I started calling her by it last night and by today she looks up when I use it and I already am feeling comfortable using it. She can't be called Boop Boop when she is ten afterall, although Nathans swears she will be Boop until she is 12. How horrible for her.

So, while I know this is an odd choice, this article here really helped me: http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/01/01/baby.name.change/index.html

We figure that since it is her middle name, as she gets older if she wants to be called Amelia, she can! Its not a problem since we do really love BOTH names. So far everyone has been really understanding...She is so adorable and sweet it doesn't matter what she goes by :)

Her new thing is CLIMBING. She is into everything. She climbs on her walker most because it has a little platform on it. She steps up, holds on then bounces up and down.

This is an every day occurance. She also loves crawling into her bouncy seat and scaring mommy to death by trying to stand up in it. Are all 8 months old this mobile, because Ive never seen anything like it. She is trying to stand up on her own also, and prompty falls over. She has bruises on her legs and even her cute little butt cheeks from falling over everything. I try not to hover but I already can tell Im going to have an adventerous child on my hands.

She also pulls everything off the shelves, Ive had to raise everything to a higher level.

And in response to my last blog, I am waiting to get my cloth diapers in the mail! So excited about it.