A Hundred

by Tweedledee
(fill-in the blank poem from school)

I wish I had a hundred books.
I wish I had a hundred Crayola crayons.
I wish I had a hundred wheels.
But, I wouldn't want a hundred teachers.

What's in a name?

My brother is such an ogre. And I mean that in the nicest way possible. That's him in the picture with the Tank. When I was a freshman in college he legally changed his name to Ogre. Well, it's actually Ochressandro Rettinger but he goes by Ogre. I still have a hard time calling him Ogre and not the name he was given when he was born. The name I grew up calling him, Timothy Alan Gideon. Not a bad name in my opinion. In fact, if The Bug had been a boy I would have really liked to use Timothy.

Now, my brother never wants to have any kids and neither does his wife. They say they're afraid of what would happen since both of their sisters had naturally-occurring twins. Really, they're just not kid-people. I know that in the eternal scheme of things that everyone is a kid-person, but you have to be in the eternal-frame-of-mind. They definitely are not. She grew up Catholic and has nothing to do with religion now, he grew up in the Church like me but when he was in high school he went completely inactive. He is as far as you can get from organized religion. But he hasn't had his name removed for Church records so I still hold out some hope.

Each time I was pregnant DH and I were so picky about the names we considered. It could never be something trendy and we always ended up sticking with family names. Tweedledum was named after DH's uncle who was killed at the Pentagon on 9/11 and Tweedledee was given my middle name which is also the first name of several family members. The Tank was named after DH (DH is the Third and Tank is the Fourth) and The Bug....... I was walking the halls of the hospital in labor and we were still discussing names. It was down to three and I finally said that we would just have to wait and see what she looked like. Because of the baby-naming process I would be devastated if any of our kids ever changed them.

Before I was a mom I always thought what he'd done was pretty crummy (mostly because our dad found out from ME by accident) but now I would just feel rejected. Rejection of everything that I have striven for as a parent. All the ideals and values I'm trying to instill and all the love and thought that went into choosing THAT name for THAT child.

So, what do you think? How would you feel?