We finally know that the little wiggler making my belly dance is a little girl. Funny thing is, we had a boy’s name all picked out. (And no, it wasn’t the name that didn’t get used when we named Cora.) But the girl’s name has been somewhat more elusive. We think we have one, for at least the first name, but we’re still debating the middle name.
Names are funny things. They give away all sorts of information about the parents. For instance, we’re not big fans of trendy names. In fact, if we think of a name we might like, we go out to the Social Security’s baby names page and check to see if it’s been a popular name of late. Names that rank 100 or higher (as in, there were 100 names more popular that year) do better than names that are more popular.
In picking names, we’ve also ended up linking names with the impressions we’ve had of other people we’ve known who’ve had that name. Names of girls who had bad reps in high school, or who one or the other of us had a reason to dislike, generally get axed off the list pretty quick.
And, of course, you really can’t use a name that’s the name of another kid you know. I like the name Samantha, but we’re friends with another couple who already have a daughter by that name, so it seems wrong to “reuse” the name. Not that we’re in favor of creating original names or spelling names in original ways, but I don’t want to “share” a name with someone too close to us.
Got a few more months to figure it out. I don’t think we’re obsessing about it, but it does occur to me that you do spend a lot of time thinking about names. Wonder how many folks have spent more time thinking about the name for their child than they originally spent weighing the decision to have a child? (No political commentary intended there… )
June 27th, 2003
I offered the director of our Vacation Bible School some assistance in creating “shekel bags”. Since the theme of the VBS is 33 AD (I think – don’t quote me on that), the kids get to shop in the “market” with shekels, and so they each get a little drawstring pouch/wallet kind of thing to hold their shekels (actually metal washers). The VBS director assured me that the bags are easy to make – something very important since my skill and experience with my sewing machine are minimal. She told me that, so long as I could run a straight stitch down some fabric, I’d have no problem.
She was right. I’ve had no problem making shekel bags. The problem is _how many_ shekel bags we need to make – and that’s the question I forgot to ask! The director’s projecting that we’ll have some 220 kids attend VBS, and each of those kids needs a shekel bag. Now, I’m not the only one sewing bags, but my stack of shekel fabric seems pretty deep. Took me about an hour and a half to sew 13 of them tonight, plus set up 10 or so more for sewing tomorrow. I had 15 already done, from previous nights’ labors. And I think I have another 30 to 40 to go, not counting the 25 I “outsourced” to my mother-in-law. (I’ll take ‘em back if she can’t get to them – just was hoping to get two pipelines flowing, else I’ll spend a lot of nights over the next week and a half crouched over my sewing machine.)
The wonderful thing is that I’m getting to improve my sewing skill on a project that will help in a very small way with our church’s efforts to spread the gospel to our kids. I’m trying to keep that in mind as I grind away, one shekel bag at a time, and also remember to use it as an object lesson that total effort is the sum of the effort of all the tasks. In this case, it’s sewing one shekel bag, and then another, and then another, and then….
June 27th, 2003
