Sunday, September 26, 2010

Copycat

I was reading a friend's latest blog post about the naming of her sons. This inspired me to sit and write out why I named my son what I did. First, though, you should check out her blog: Bootsie Q. McGromblestein.

I somehow knew Ryan was a boy long before we had the BIG ultrasound that told us. I had dreams where I saw him and in my dreams, his name wasn't Ryan. It was Ian. I don't know why, but it was always Ian. And not the gay way that the guy from 90210 pronounces it, either. I'm talking about "eeee-ann". I love that gmail logs my chats because I was able to find exactly when I knew that I was having a boy. It was my dad's birthday, 9/22 and I commented to my friend (whose blog I mention above) at 9:35 AM "Did I tell you I think I'm having a boy? I had a dream the other day that we had a boy and we named him Ian. Well, the dream wasn't about me having a boy and naming him Ian. There was a toddler in the dream who was a boy named Ian who was my son."

I had known I was pregnant for 22 days at that point. Anyways, I just knew he was a boy. Paul and I never considered girl names, really. I kept an excel spreadsheet of name possibilities and ranked them by favorite. Ryan was always at the top of the list. I'd always thought I'd name my son Andrew. I love the name Andrew and I thought having a little Andy would be so cute. It just never seemed right, though. I clearly remember picking up our living room one day and holding something in my hand that was for him and thinking, "This goes in Ryan's room". And so it was. His name was never anything different. I don't know anyone named Ryan. Well, I know an old internet friend whose name is Ryan, but there's no relation to why I named my son that.

His middle name, though, is Zachary. Zachary is my brother and my best friend. Yeah, I have my husband who is my best friend and one or two girlfriends that I consider to be my best friend...but at the end of the day, Zach is my true best friend. He has been my constant companion for as long as I can remember and even though we don't spend a lot of time together, he gets me like no one else does. There have always been two men in my life who were more important to me than any other, my dad and my brother. And I have two more: my husband and my son. I wanted to give Ryan a middle name that honored my dad or my brother. I felt bad because I didn't want Paul to feel like we weren't honoring his side of the family. Another moment when I knew I married the greatest man alive is when I mentioned this and he said that our children will carry his last name, and that honors his side and we should decide on a name that I like that comes from my side of the family. So we chose Zachary. I initially actually wanted Zachary to be Ryan's first name, but I thought it might be a bit confusing and the fact that Ryan's name seemed to always be Ryan couldn't be overridden by my brother's name.

So, we have our Ryan Zachary. I can't imagine him with any other name. I think his name suits him. It's simply who he is. Should we ever have a little girl, I don't know wtf we're going to do. I found boy names so easy to pick, and maybe that's because I knew somehow that he was a boy all along and somehow I knew his name would be Ryan. I do think if we ever have a daughter that she'll be someone's namesake as well.

Well, it's Sunday and it seems like fall has reached north Texas. I actually put pants on Ryan this morning. We have our windows open and fall scented candles burning. Ryan's at his grandpa's for a few hours and I'm nesting. I don't think I ever got out of the whole nesting thing. Something about Sundays and preparing for the upcoming week fills me with excitement. What do you like to spend your Sundays doing?

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