And then there were two...

The results from the round of four. Drum roll please....

1)Jackson handles 2)Dylan easily. In all honesty, Jackson has been the one name that both Mindy and I have both really liked throughout this process. This is the problem with Jackson: two couples whom we are very close with (one in Texas and one in Cali) have recently had baby boys whom they named Jack. Mindy and I have tried long and hard to find a name that we both like as much as Jackson that isn't as similar to Jack. It seems we might have to give up on this quest. My only promise to both Jack parentals is that we vow never to refer to our child as Jack. If he has a nickname, it will be J. Or Stryker. That is the best compromise I can think of.

As for matchup number two... we have our first minor upset. That's right, 2) Cameron defeats 1) Jordan. My excitement with Cameron was steadily growing until I had a conversation with a buddy of mine from California (a gregarious dilettante who shall remain nameless). So I shared with this young man, who shockingly is not a reader of our blog, about the premise behind the Tournament o' Names and the potential name options. Well, he really seemed to love the name Cameron and went on and on about how much he liked that name and how great the nickname Cam was, etc. A few sentences into his praise, I thought I might be detecting the occasional female pronoun. Hmmm. Then came this fateful sentence, "If you have a nickname like Cam, you are just bound to be a cool chick." Like a slap across the face! Okay, let's ignore the fact that one of the co-best men in my wedding doesn't know the gender of my firstborn (I weep as I type now) and focus on the message. When I found out that we were having a boy, the only criteria I had was I wanted a name that was masculine and not androgynous. I had convinced myself that Cameron was pretty much just a guy's name until Scott Ellis Blake (I've given up on the whole anonymity thing and want to completely shame him in public now) rocked my world. Now I have some serious thinking to do again. Damn it all.

Anyway, here are your finalists....

1) Jackson (J) vs. 2) Cameron (Cam)

Voice your opinion now or forever hold your peace. And you are right, Aaron (my other co-best man, who I know is aware of the gender of our child, and has obviously justified my decision to have him stand closer to the altar at our wedding), the name will probably end up being something entirely different then everything discussed on this blog. But every vote counts. Yes we can!!!

Oops

As I'm sure it's quite obvious, Mindy actually wrote that last post...I just didn't notice that I was signed in under Mike's account. Apologies to our readers for the confusion!

Mike Caught Me

So I have to admit it...just as he accused me in a previous blog entry, Mike caught me being somewhat crafty. One night, I was flipping through a Pottery Barn Kids catalog, and I saw a cute idea of stenciled animals that had been framed. I knew I could do that myself, so I decided to go to Michaels and Hobby Lobby and see what I could do. When Mike wrote that blog entry, I think I was at the kitchen table surrounded by scrapbook paper, glue, ribbon, and paint. I am quite happy with how they turned out - I like that they are appropriate for a baby's room, but they aren't too baby-ish. Voila - here is the finished product!

I also painted some wooden letters to hang as a monogram above G-Baby's crib. Now all we need is for you people to vote to help us decide what the first letter should be!

On a side note, I am definitely enjoying my time off of work. In my first two days home, I have done some baby shopping, ran some errands, walked Reilly, caught up on TV, taken a long nap, and treated myself to a pedicure. Going to work just gets in the way of a truly pleasant day!

Also, I realized that I have never made an official announcement on our blog that my parents are officially moving to Austin! After an unexpected and longer than planned stop in the Phoenix area, they are on the road again and headed out our direction. Hopefully, the rest of their drive will be safe and uneventful and they will arrive before G-Baby does! For those of you who are interested, my dad is keeping a blog: ruddonthemove.blogspot.com.

Results from round one

First, I would like to thank everyone for their input. Much appreciated. All of your comments were taken into serious consideration. Allow me to present your first round winners (complete with brief game notes from each matchup).

1. Jackson defeats 4.Tupaquiupanqui in a rout. This game was never close. Despite the fact that Tupaquiupanqui had the grandest meaning of all contestants (it means memorable and glorious lord), it didn't stand a chance against the rugged-southern feel of Jackson. If we name our child Jackson Graves, he is almost guaranteed to be really really goooood looooking. Which is nice. Plus me and my son together will be Michael Jackson (the young cool version of course, not the creepy older one).

2. Dylan defeats 3. Tyler in a nail biter. The battle of the Y's actually went into overtime and was only decided about 5 minutes ago. (Aaron, I think your post helped me persuade Mindy, so thank you for your contribution.) Dylan McKay was everything I was never able to be, so I would like to give my son the opportunity to fulfill my dream. If young Graves is a sixteen year old with a bachelor pad and a girlfriend like Kelly Taylor, I will be the proudest papa ever. But if he even considers leaving his Kelly look-alike for anybody resembling Brenda Walsh, then father and son are going to be having a serious talk.

3. This one pains me to write: 1. Jordan over 4. Stryker. My quest has come to an end. Stryker Graves is nothing but a memory now. I feel like I should give a heartfelt concession speech to everyone who supported my campaign, but I don't know if I have the heart to do it. I want to be very clear right now that if my child's name ends up being Jordan, he is in no way named after that Overrated, Selfish, Traveling, Gambling-Addicted, Sociopath M. Jordan (I won't type his full name to protect his anonymity).

2. Cameron defeats 3. Isaiah. Cameron won this matchup for 2 reasons. 1) The nickname Cam is the best nickname of any contestant. I am hoping to constantly re-enact the rap song "Hey Ma" (by Cam'ron) with my son, where I train him to respond, "What up?" every time I say, "Hey Cam." As I'm sure you've guessed by now, I've lobbied hard to spell Cam'ron with that unnecessary punctuation. So cool. 2) As much as I love unnecessary punctuation, I hate words with totally redundant vowels. Why is Isaiah spelled like that? Seriously?!?! Besides, Isaiah seriously challenges my spelling skills every time I type it. In the end, Isaiaiah really had no chance against the mighty Cam.

It pains me greatly that the first round produced no upsets. But I think that it goes to show that the seeding was legit. And we have some excellent second round matchups to look forward to. Here is the final four:

1. Jackson vs. 2. Dylan

1. Jordan vs. 2. Cam'ron

This is going to be tough to decide!

Tournament o' Names

Okay, we're getting down to the wire and have yet to come up with a name. No, this is not a mirage to hold off inquiries from friends and family, we truly have not named this thing yet. We do have some working titles for the little guy though. In fact, we seem to have narrowed it down to a short-list. Progress my friends.

But now I think I have another idea that just might expedite this process. I would like to present a "march madness" style tournament that decides our child's moniker once and for all. Using information from our conversations regarding names (note to our shower-goers: the number of these is far closer to my estimate than Mindy's) I have taken the liberty of seeding the candidates. Names will go head-to-head against each other with the prevailing name advancing to the next round. Rounds will occur daily, so names will have no time to rest between matchups. This is a single elimination tournament with the winners being decided by intense arguing, err I mean discussion, between Mindy and myself. Keep in my mind that I haven't run this by the Mrs. yet (aka this might not really be happening). With that being said, I present to you the elite eight:

1: Jackson
vs.
4: Tupaquiupanqui

2: Dylan
vs.
3: Tyler

1: Jordan
vs.
4: Stryker

2: Cameron
vs.
3: Isaiah

Feel free to cast your support behind any of these worthy competitors. I'm rooting for some upsets! Let the madness begin.

A crafty craftsman

Allow me to paraphrase a great philosopher of our generation: There are two things that I cannot stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's hobbies. And crafters. I have always hated anything craft-related. The word alone is weird. Walking into a Michaels creeps me out. I feel like I'm on the enemies' home turf. I envision everyone I see surrounded by a sea of cats and trinkets, hunched over a table for weeks, creating something they are going to sell for $15.99 at a craft fair. I see our landfills filling up with the junk that they have created. I'm not an environmentalist by any means, but I think outlawing crafting would be the green thing to do. In fact, if I was ruler of the planet, that would be my second order of business (right after I outlawed toll roads of course).

I know that my hatred of crafting is petty and intolerant. But I can't help it. It's a part of who I am. And after some soul searching, I have figured out why. It was ingrained into me on the suburban streets of Yorba Linda. It was driven into my heart every day of Kindergarten and every weekend at church. When you force a child with borderline retarded fine motor skills to participate in "craft time" over and over again, a hatred begins to brew within the depths of who he is. Sunday school was the worst. I could never figure out what crafting had to with God. As far as I could tell, Jesus never crafted (I know, I know... he was a carpenter, but that is a legitimate trade). I would sit there just staring longingly across the room at the toys, wondering why they had all been sequestered away from us. Why they had to torture us like that between singing and snack I'll never know. And then seeing that patronizing look of clearly faked approval on my mother's face when I showed her my handy work; it was almost more than I could bear. My shame had to be externalized. There was nothing wrong with me: crafting is clearly the devil.

So why am I sharing all this? Because as I type this, Mindy is crafting in the other room. Don't worry she is not in any physical danger, I have my hatred under control. She is making these animal pictures for the baby's room that are actually really cute yet chic. I am very impressed. But it got me thinking about crafting and parenting and what if my son was a crafter and how I'd have to mock him, disown him, etc. Seriously though, I have realized that when you make kids do unnecessary things that they suck at, over and over and over again, they are going to either hate you or always hate that thing. I am going to try to remember this as a parent. And I'm going to make my son do monotonous, difficult crafts at way too young an age to ensure that he detests them as much I do. Let the Graves' alliance against crafters begin!

Wow!

The exclamation point to period ratio in Mindy's last post was off the charts. I've never read a post punctuated with so much passion. Personally, I don't think the exclamation point would really capture the tone that I am looking for right now. If only our dialect had a symbol that conveyed "holy S*$! this might actually happen NOW," then I would be using a lot of those. I think I had reached a state of quan by deluding myself into thinking that young Graves would not be arriving until February 4th. But the doctor's visit yesterday burst that safe little bubble. Mindy has become nothing but a walking cervix to me. I can't focus on what she's talking about because all I can think is "it's thinning as you talk." It's thinning a I type this now. It can't be stopped. Every time Mindy walks into a room I get the taste of lifesavers in my mouth. It's disturbing. Plus, let me remind you, the teacher in our birthing class said that "Orientals just squat and have there babies in a field." I thought this was just kind of bigoted nonsense, but since finding out Mindy is dilating without contractions I feel compelled to make sure Mindy avoids all agricultural areas. I would prefer the birth occur in the vicinity of some medical professionals. Seriously though, that news really has caused me to do some procrastinated mental preparation. I think I might be almost ready for this now. I guess we're going to soon find out. Bring it Baby!