"What's Your Name?" "Berit." Cue Blank Stare.

I remember driving near Detroit about 10 years ago, thinking about one of those topics that creep into the female mind every now and then: What I would name my children, someday. I saw a sign that said "Madison Heights" and I thought, "Hey, Madison would make a cool name! No one names their daughter Madison!"

Oh, hah. I'm glad I changed my mind, as now a number of little girls I know are named Madison. (And it is very, very adorable.) :)

When it came to naming our children, Trevor and I had a different plan than that of driving expressways looking for inspiration. And every so often, when we meet new people or when the idea that we named our kids something completely out-of-the-ordinary gets to someone, we are asked why we chose the names we did.

Lately there have been a lot of inquiries regarding this. I'm not sure if it's that I've caught up with people on a certain social networking site who knew me a zillion years ago or if there's just a new crop of people who wish, for ease of use, we had named our kids Emma and Jake. (Which are both very, very adorable.)

So here are the stories.

When I was pregnant for Berit, we knew we wanted something that was a very classic German or Scandinavian name. Our last name being so obviously German and such a mouthful, I wanted to pair it with a first name that made sense. Plus, having been raised in a Danish community and Trevor in a German/Czech family, we liked the names from those regions.

Trevor was stuck on "Berit" from the moment he found it. I wanted something a little more feminine and known. But soon we discovered that our baby had a heart condition; one that she might not survive, and I didn't care anymore. We needed to name our baby, to know her, to bond with her now, and I told Trevor he could pick anything at all, as long as her middle name was Hayes, which is my maiden name. He told me that Berit meant "happy girl," and even though the meanings behind names are really just a novelty at best to me, I liked it, because she was supposed to be struggling yet she was... happy. Active. When Trevor read books to my belly she kicked and squirmed and moved close to his face. In fact, that's how we got her to change out of a breech position. So Berit she was, and is, and she loves it.

I will admit that The Sound of Music is my very favorite movie of all time, but it's not the reason for our choosing the name "Marta" for our second daughter. When we found out we were pregnant, I printed out a list of German names, and I just loved it. Trevor was on the fence, but since he chose Berit I got to choose Marta, and it just seems so lovely to me. And if, upon meeting her, anyone ever says to Marta, "My, you're practically a lady," I will secretly love them for all time.

A funny thing about the names... Right when we were very, very first pregnant with Berit, we ran through the list of baby names that we liked in general. This was before the decision to do the German names. Anyway, our top two names for girls were Evan and Drew. If we went with Evan, we thought we'd call her Evie (eh-vee, not eee-veee). We didn't tell anyone about this, because we were so newly pregnant and at that point, we were certain we wouldn't reveal our name choices.

While I was pregnant for B, one of my dearest friends was preggers for her twin boys. When I asked her what she would name them, it was "Evan and Drew." ! That sent us back to the books, and led to our decision to do German names.

A year or so after that, Trevor's cousin and his wife had their first baby. A girl, who they named "Evie." And yes, they pronounce it eh-vee.

So what would we name our next? Well, if it's a boy, his name will be Peter, which has been our boy name since the start (though Trevor did really, really press for AXEL. Honest). But since we're not even close to being pregnant yet, we haven't discussed girl names.

So that's the story. I hope my girls like their names, and their reasons why.

In Which I Use My Blog For Personal And Major-Decision-Making Sorting Out In The Absence Of My Husband

For weeks and weeks and months and days and hours we've been considering adding another baby to our brood. Right up front, this post is NOT that I'm pregnant. I'm not. But we thought I could be this month, and we were pleased with the possibility. And we determined that if we were ever going to get out of babyland and into "The kids are transportable and flexible and let's start having fun as a family"land, we'd need to make a decision by August about just what and how we'd go about it all.

And then we went away for the night, got a little tipsy, and decided we should really have FOUR children anyway, nevermind this "one more" business.

And then Trevor left for Chicago, and today was my last day of single parenthood, and it was a doozy. I mean, we had a really great day, the weather was sparkling, Berit had her first day of summer camp and all was well. It was a doozy of a thinking day. For example:

Out for a walk, Marta started in the stroller and Berit was walking Mosey. Then, Berit was done walking Mosey and Marta wanted out of the stroller. Berit wanted to run but Marta needed to stop at every single tent worm on the road, and we have a ton of them right now so we were pretty much going as fast as they were, except Berit was trying to run home and was mad at me so she wasn't listening when I was telling her that at any moment a car could come and she could get hurt really, really badly and that she needed to listen to me, and I was also pushing the stroller and walking Mosey. And I thought, "Now how would I fit a new baby into all of this?" 

This sort of thing happened all day; benign moments where both girls' personalities hit full steam and I realized that I could barely vacuum the house without Berit screaming that she's terrified of everything loud and that she needed to have me listen to a zillion songs first, and without Marta twirling until she literally could not stand up without the momentum of her twirling keeping her in a delicate balance of uprightedness and then smashing her head on every sharp-cornered surface in the room. And Berit wasn't sympathetic for a second, and how, then, would she be helpful with a new baby? 

And while I was vacuuming, I was pondering all of the insecurities I have about my current children. Such as:

Do I give Berit enough undivided attention? Because no matter how long I listen to her singing, no matter how focused I am on her stories, no matter how often I take her picture or videotape her dancing or let her have one more sentence of chatter OKAY ONE MORE SENTENCE AND THAT'S IT, it's never enough for her. She always has to bring up all the other people who do these things for her, and who lay with her while she falls asleep or scratch her back as long as she wants.

And do we do enough to stimulate Marta? The first thing she says to me each morning is, "Go bye-bye? Outside?" And she continues to say this all day long. And no, we don't get to go bye-bye all day long, because it's damn cold here lately and her sister is a hermit who doesn't want anything to do with playing outside most of the time. Yet Marta takes one step into the living room and screams "NOOOOO!" at some point every day, and I sympathize because frankly, I get sick of seeing the same room all day, too. 

And then I started thinking about adding a baby to the family, and I realized that the above qualms would only be sharpened, SIGNIFICANTLY, if we were stuck inside again, with Mommy's hands and attention wrapped around the new person in the house. 

Yet I know I don't want it to be just the two of them. I love having two other siblings, and I would love having three more, too. 

And I know that all of you grandmothers and friends of my mom will say things like, "When it happens you just make it work," and "It's worth it in the long run," and I know all of this. I'm just nervous about it, and I wonder if I'm a good enough mom to in fact make it work, and if I'm organized enough or patient enough or if I can ever, ever give my kids enough time and energy and love.

So I don't know. I don't think I'll ever know, until something happens that makes my decision for me. 

Things We Keep

Our Christmas stockings came in the mail yesterday. They had been on my mind for weeks -- do I buy new stockings or just make do with the old ones? Such a small matter, but I couldn't let it go. It became a thing.

I had made stockings for Trevor, Mosey and me before we had kids. They are cute, but not very sturdy and may not last long. I thought about reinforcing them and making new ones for the girls, but really I didn't want to put forth the effort. But what if doing so would be special for my children some day?

On the other hand, nice, professionally done stockings would be so much prettier, hold up better, and would be, for lack of a better word, classier. 

I asked people about it, it became such a thing to me. And most people said to make the stockings. But my mom said "Just buy them." And so I did.

And when they arrived, I showed them to the family and they were impressed. I meant to put them away, but there they sat, on the kitchen table. Trevor moved them to the couch; they stayed there, too. They're still there. I keep going over and picking them up, feeling the embroidery, looking at them. I can't stop thinking about the stockings hanging on the shelf that looks like a mantle in our living room this Christmas, and the mantles we'll have each Christmas from now on. I think about adding to the stockings -- will the store still carry this design, or will future children have different stockings? They'll show up in our happiest pictures, they'll cause joy in our kids, they'll be held in pajama-covered laps while each child waits their turn to investigate their own. They'll be loved in the way of something you know belongs to you, personally, but also to your family, for happiness, in a way that if it wasn't there, you'd miss it terribly. 

And there they were, brand new, the first showing, looking, meeting.

They cropped back into my mind this morning while Berit was washing potatoes and I was making frosting. The potatoes had been in a big white bowl -- they had already been washed, but she loves washing things for me and they were handy. I thought about the stockings again when I saw the bowl. It had been a wedding gift; one of two special pieces that our guests had signed in lieu of a guestbook. People wrote funny, kind and loving sentiments on this bowl and a platter, then the pieces had been fired and now we used them all the time. Whenever I get them out I glance at the phrases most visible ("The honeymoon's the best part!", "Eat, drink and be married!", "Welcome to the family!", "Hug every day and kiss each other, too!") and I smile. Sometimes I look underneath to the hidden signatures, and other times I wonder who the heck that person is, or I wish (meanly, I know) that so-and-so, that date of that guest who had too many drinks and was out-of-control at the wedding, hadn't signed it so visibly. 

And now my daughter was rewashing potatoes in it. I definitely wasn't thinking about that possibility when I put it in my cupboard for the first time as a newlywed. 

I remember when Marta was born, and we had all of Berit's old clothes, crib (that she never slept in), high chair and other gear ready for Marta to use. And a few times I thought, "Don't you know whose sweater that was?" "Don't you know how I found that sweater in a catalog that was way out of my price league, but it was the perfect shade of blue to match her eyes, so I splurged and she wore it every day she could fit into it?" And Marta wore the sweater, or shoes, or whatever, and spit up on it, or slept on it funny and made a wrinkle, and basically didn't care if it had belonged to the Queen of England. And whenever that happened, or happens, I think about how funny it is that we attach such value, such personal value, to things. 

And I can see how, if we never have another girl, I won't be able to give away a few items of Marta's, and especially not some of the things that the girls shared. 

I just had a flash into the future, of my girls reading this blog when they're grown, and laughing about the stockings. "Those old things?" Or maybe a yet-unknown child will say, "I'm the only one with a different stocking!" (Or maybe three or four kids will say that. Eek.)

I'm understanding, though, why my mom keeps bringing my sister and me a pile of junk when we get together. She's not a pack rat, and neither am I (my sister is questionable), but there's this stuff that she brings to us, and we laugh and poke fun at her, and say things like "Mom, why in the world would I want that gold clown charm for a necklace I wore when I was 14?" Or "Thanks for bringing me your tassel from your high school graduation, but really, no thanks." But maybe I won't make such a fuss over that stuff anymore. Because just watching my 2 1/2 year old pick wet potatoes out of a wedding gift is making me misty-eyed. Imagine the waterworks when I can thump a Rubbermaid bin of junk on my girls' doorsteps someday, and try to explain that that itty-bitty polka-dotted sweater was the perfect shade of blue, back when they were my babies.