No, I am not pregnant.
Popular baby namesSocial Security just posted their 2008 baby name data, and while I'm not naming any babies, I just obsess a little with name trends.
Everyone thinks that they are being original when they name their baby. Okay, not everyone, I mean...there are plenty of classic names, like my nieces and nephew...Nathan, Sarah and Jane. Classics are classics, that's why you'll still find Christopher and Michael (husband, brother-in-law) in the top ten after all these years, they are tried and true good names.
So there is a lot of research that goes into predicting name popularity, and if you were shocked three years ago when all of the sudden your one and only baby, Ava had lots of Ava company, you could have done your research (if you even care, and I'm not saying you should care).
Maybe only Sommer and I really care about this kind of thing, but I was 100% positive when I was trying to conceive Alice, that she would be Ava. I was going to spell her name Eva, because I speak Spanish and have many beloved friends in Spain, and in Spain, Ava, is spelled with an "E". I figured that if the spelling of her name plagued her with a lifetime being called, "Eva," all was still well, because I love the name Eva too (I'm big on owning your spellings, you can't name your child some phonetically bizarre name and then gasp when people mispronounce it...in my humble opinion).
I thought I was very original. I knew no Ava/Eva's, and Chris was all for the name. I did know that Heather Locklear an Ava, and that celebrity naming does influence name popularity, but I was still thinking I was the only person plotting a baby Ava.
Until...
My sister-in-law Sage was up for a visit and we told her "our" name and she was totally shocked, because she and Mike were also trying for a baby and also loving on the name. She also confessed that her sister, who had us both beat and was already pregnant, was going to use the name Ava if she was having a girl. This is when the light bulbs came on...maybe I wasn't starting a new trend with the name Ava!
I did a little research. In 2004, Ava was ranked 25, a dangerous rank...but I found an article about name trends and discovered that while most names jostle between two or three places year to year, there are a few names that make leaps over a few years and those names tend to wind up in the top ten in a few years. They specifically said that Ava would be ranked in the top ten by 2005, and it was...it ranked 9th the year of Alice's birth. Near miss.
It was hard, but I'm really committed to classic, yet uncommon names. For example, Ruby. Everyone hated the name when I chose it. Chris straight up moved onto the couch over the controversy and my mother-in-law started a campaign to solicit better name ideas from those who love me. In the end, I won. I knew her name was to be Ruby. It was the ONLY name that I wanted.
To this day, I find excuses to say her name in public around other people so that they can say, "What a beautiful name". I just love her name. Now, I was right in the trend. I'm not trying to claim that I wasn't...it did trend up and still is, my taste is right in line with the trend, but I try to stay out of the super names of the top ten. To this day, I've only met one other Ruby, and she's six years younger than my Ruby. I hear of other Ruby's, I hear, "I have a niece, I have a neighbor..." but I've only met one, so I am satisfied that Ruby will never be "Ruby P" (though of course homeschooling kind of lends to a first name basis anyway, right?). (When Ruby was born, it was ranked 208, and now it is ranked 113, a significant jump, but names ranked that far are still obscure enough.)
So Ava was ousted and we decided on Alice (after Ruby announced to my midwife that was going to be her name), thinking it was probably going to ring hideous (and it did) to most, but it was growing on me. So the day after we announced that her name would be Alice (a few weeks before she was born), Tina Faye had a baby and named her Alice. Sommer called me to tell me and I was baffled, but decided from the general public reaction to the name, that I was good to go.
So she's four now, and I've never met another Alice. Never heard of another little Alice...just one 80-something lady at church with her name...and the maid from The Brady Bunch.
Recently, there's been a little more buzz about the name from Twilight and many people compliment her name, and I do love it in every way. Alice has jumped from 414 to 326 during her lifetime, so it is gaining in popularity, and my name choice, again, followed the trends.
Anyway, I love all the popular names too. They are darling and appealing and make for some really cute little people who I love. I just tend to want my kids to have names that aren't invented...ewwwww...I really don't get into the trend of making up names, like...okay, can't think of an example, but there's a lot of that out there. I like classic names, but not common names.
I wanted a "Levi" for my first boy, but now it is gaining in popularity, funny how that happens. At the same time I'm thinking of a name, a ton of other people are also thinking of it.
Ruby has worked so hard at playing the piano, and Joanie, "Mrs. Steck" is all set up to recognize that kind of hard work. Ruby had her 1/2 book recital last week, she was the only performer and had a little audience there just for her. We enjoyed two years of effort in about ten minutes, and Ruby was thrilled to recieve her coveted Clara Schumann bust for her trophy. It is so fun to see your kids just beaming, and she WAS beaming!
Ruby told me a little bit about each song, and I recorded her thoughts here in the program. (She wanted me to write "Grandma" instead of "Oma", so she must be aware now that we have a May birthdy!
Thanks to fellow piano student Parker and his mom (my friend) Julie for coming to support Ruby! If they hadn't come, it would have been just me, my mom, Chris and Alice.
Anyway, I'm posting these knowing that they will probably look really dark. I looked at my post about the wedding photos on my other computer (this laptop is new) and they looked totally different on that screen than they do on this one...so I invested in some calibration hardware and software to try and remedy the problem. I spend a lot of time making certain that the exposure if the way I want it, and it really bummed me out to see how different my hard work looked on another screen. Anyway, so that being said, I'll probably have to redo the editing on this shoot once the calibration stuff gets here (can't be too soon). 
She's in the second lane from the bottom...so little and so alone in that big water!
