Waiting...

This is the first thing I have bought for our soon-to-be new baby. After Renee was born I started getting rid of a lot of our old baby things. Most of them were given to us as hand me downs or gifts, and after being used by five children of our own over the last ten years, had seen better days. I decided that if I ever had anymore babies, I was going to pick out things I actually liked. Because, while I appreciated all the free stuff we had, I don't really care much for other people's taste. My new bassinet arrived by FedEx today. My oldest child very sweetly put it together for my soon to be youngest child.

So now we wait. Since we've already solved our transportation crisis with the purchase of our now-infamous green van, there's not much more to do to prepare for the new baby. Oh, except pick a name. Two names, really; don't let the blue ribbon on the bassinet fool you (it came with both pink and blue, and my assembly team chose to install the blue one), we won't know what flavor baby we have until it's actually born. I'm an elitist snob about a lot of things, and baby names are one of them. I hate names that are trendy, common, popular, spelled "uneekly", or just plain made up. I hate first names as last names and boy's names used as girl's names. In the Christian-homeschool groups I tend to socialize in, there has been a trend to give babies less common Biblical names, to the point that they are actually becoming common. If you call out for "Elijah" or "Noah" at the playground with this group, you'll get a half-dozen kids come running. Now, some common names don't bother me. Names like Michael, Elizabeth, or (our own) Joseph are good, solid names that have been popular for hundreds of years, so somehow that's OK with me. At the risk of offending everyone I know, I'll refrain from mentioning any more specific names that I don't like. The problem most people have is that they really think they are being creative when naming their babies one of the top-ten names. I hear all the time, "Oh, when we heard the name we just loved it, we had never heard another child with that name before naming our little (child's name), but now it's all over the place." As if they were the first ones. Even though said name had been appearing on the most-popular baby names list for a number of years. Sigh... so, you see my dilemma in coming up with yet another name.