What's in a name?

When I was about 20 weeks pregnant with Katie, we found out, via an ultrasound, that we were having a girl.  Jim's first thought was, "How am I going to keep her from leaving the house wearing THAT?!?"  Before then, we had only briefly discussed names for our baby, knowing that the discussion would be easier when we only had only one gender to consider.

So it came to be that, when I was about 20 weeks pregnant with Christian and found out that he was a boy, we had no list of names that we liked, no pre-selected name that either of us desired.  In fact, now that we had a child and knew many more people with children, especially boys, we found that several names that we DID like were already taken by close friends.  So, we returned to the drawing board to come up with boy names.  For awhile, I wasn't sure we were going to come up with anything in time and we would end up either, calling him something we weren't thrilled with because we needed to call him SOMETHING, or taking home "Baby Boy S" from the hospital, name TBD.  Neither option appealed.

I, of course, had lots of girl names ready, names that we had discussed when we had Katie and weren't able to use for one reason or another.  In fact, I had spent the last 5 years refining the list so that I was all prepared with a wonderful girl's name when we found out that we were, in fact, not having a girl after all.

What we settled on, James Christian, came from several different places.

James
We went back and forth on this one.  Jim is the 4th Scarborough male to hold the name James.  Amusingly, we recently discovered that he is the first to actually be called James.  His father, James Michael, goes by Mike.  His grandfather, James Ellis, went by Buster (it is the Deep South after all).  His great grandfather, James Franklin, the first to be names James, went by Franklin.  Why four generations of his family named their boys James but didn't like the name enough to use it will forever be a mystery to me.

In another interesting connection, my father is also named James.

While we weighed the benefits of maintaining the family tradition with the possible confusion of having more than one James in the family (credit reports, misdirected mail, etc), we decided to keep the tradition alive but choose a middle name that we would use to call him by.  We also both like the name James.

Christian
This name stumped us for quite awhile.  Since his middle name was the one he would be called by, it was very important that we like it, a lot.  We went through a lot of different choices.  He was Carter for several months.  We liked the sound of it but ultimately decided that we were not excited about the fact that the name only means "one who drives a cart".  We really liked Alexander but one of Katie's good friends is an Alex and that seemed strange.  Another problem with coming up with names this time around is that I have been teaching middle and high school for the last 4 years.  In 4 years, I've had several male students whose names I liked but who I would rather not recall whenever I use it.

We thought long and hard about calling him James Erik after my older brother who died several years ago.  I really like the name Erik, I like how it is spelled, I haven't had any students named Erik, Katie doesn't have any friends named Erik, and I wanted to honor my older brothers memory.  Ultimately, we decided that it would be too painful for my family to call him Erik.  I believe we could have used that as a middle name if we were not going to call him by his middle name.

One night, Jim had a brilliant idea.  A compromise that would do everything we wanted it to.  Christian has similar sounds to the name Carter, I've never had a student named Christian, none of our friends have kids named Christian, and Christian was Erik's middle name.  I am able to remember Erik after all.

What we are calling him
We would like to call him Christian.  For the moment, we would rather not call him Chris or any other nickname.  That may change in the future but that is our wish for now.

 James Christian (photo credit Laura Case Photography)

Me with my older brother, Erik Christian, Christmas 2005.

Announcing the birth...

of James Christian Scarborough!  Long awaited and well loved by Mom, Dad, and big sister Katie.

James Christian Scarborough
Born: 5/19/2011 at 9:38am
9lbs 3 oz (well, technically 9lbs 2.9oz but the docs called it 3 oz so that's what we're sticking with!)
22.25 in long

Yes, I realize that he is now 3.5 weeks old, but, we've been busy!  Learning to parent two has certainly been an adventure.

A Sad Day

Today is a very sad day. It started off as a wonderful day. Katie got up and dressed before the timer, ate breakfast timely, and Katie was all-around cooperative. She was having an especially good time playing with a rubber exam glove she got yesterday. A nurse inflated it for her and drew a smiley face to entertain Katie while Mom visited with the doctor. Katie called the glove "Nemo." She said it was a spiky fish, and played with the fingers by pushing them into the body of the glove.

Then Katie took Nemo to the bathroom. The bathroom trip was going swimmingly. The adults were eating breakfast. A shriek rang out from the bathroom. The kind of shriek that accompanies loss of limb and such. Both parents rush to aid their daughter. Nemo died! The horror! Beloved Nemo has left this earth, never to return again! The wailing! "When can I get another?" Oh, the wailing! "Katie, take a deep breath," I said. "I can't," came her halting, sobby reply.

Ten minutes later, all better.

500 in 2010 update

Well, 2010 has come and gone and I did not quite make the miles I had hoped to.  I did, however, find new motivation to get back up after falling off the wagon and have enjoyed the ride.  I managed to make it to 397.01 miles this year and I am proud of every one.  Discovering my pregnancy after school had started, a hard start to the school year, hitting first trimester fatigue and then a long illness in November kept me down at the end of the year.  My goal is to keep moving in the new year and continue moving throughout the rest of this pregnancy and then get up after the pregnancy and keep on keeping on.  My friends are continuing the challenge from last year with a new one: Move it 2011. 




This year there is a time as well as a miles component, depending on which you wish to participate in.   I have chosen both but I may do much better on time as the miles don't pile up as quickly while I walk and I can count pilates, wii fit and other exercise activities.  My personal, in light of the pregnancy, is 100 hours and 400 miles.  Cheer me on as I try to keep moving and stay fit to have this baby!

Out of the mouth of babes...

comes some very unusual stuff.  Heard in our house this evening:
(about Cinderella's fairy godmother) "She disappeared." "Yeah, because she's magic, like the tooth fairy!"

"I want to be Cinderella because she doesn't have to go potty!"

Christmas 2010 - The Beginning

We started our Christmas season off with a trip to see the Apex Christmas Parade last night.  We like attending this even when we didn't live in Apex and we especially wanted to go now that we live here.  The downside of the parade is that it is the only parade that I know of in our area that is at night and it can be COLD.  Last night, by some crazy fluke, it was actually SNOWING.  It doesn't generally snow here until January and February.  Here we are all bundled up to watch.

 

In keeping with the Christmas spirit for the weekend, we decked the halls today.  Our traditional family trip to pick out a Christmas tree lasted exactly 2 minutes as the wind had started up and it was maybe 40 degrees at 12:30.  Overall, I think we did a nice job this year.

  

A rare picture of the two of us!

Merry Christmas!

Katie and Mommy's Big Adventure - Williamsburg (Day 5)

The long awaited continuation of Katie and Mommy's Big Adventure!

At the end of our long hot walk from the metro station (in DC, for those of you who don't know or remember our previous day's adventure click here), Katie and I headed off to a new adventure in Colonial Williamsburg!

We managed to get there in time to catch about half of the reenactment they did that morning.  Katie didn't understand much of it but I had a good time.  After we managed to get through the cannons at the end of the reenactment (which Katie listened to covering her ears and hiding against me, sorry sweetie!) Katie finally relaxed enough to listen and even dance to the fife and drums. 

We covered all the great Williamsburg highlights.  It was awesome.  I had fun, Katie had fun, and we got to see and do a lot of fun things.  We tried out the stocks...

...the cooper, and the shoe maker.  We had a particularly good time at the furniture maker and he gave Katie some horsehair grass stem or something that they used to use as sandpaper.  She had a blast spending 15 minutes or so sanding different pieces of wood they had. 

We also made bricks at the brick maker which involved the fun task of playing in the mud (called treading clay).  Workers would work the clay in their bare feet to make it soft and pliable while also cleaning out sticks and rocks that would make the bricks more likely to crack.  For us, it was just a good reason to get dirty.

 We tried on hats...

 

...tried out the local jail...

 
...visited with the locals...

 

...and generally had a great, although exhausting day.