new car

we interrupt our regularly scheduled name-posts to say... we bought a car last night! A Honda odyssey in "obsidian blue." it has 8 seats - 8! for the last several months we figured if* we bought a new car we'd go with the mazda 5 which is much closer to car-sized (and has 6 seats), but in the end we figured if we were going to do this bigger car thing, we were going to do it all the way. and bigger it is - it barely fits in our garage, so the next task is to clear out the drawers lining the side of our garage! the odyssey gets the best safety ratings, and we negotiated a great under-invoice price. so we're happy... and kinda of overwhelmed with being mini-van people. but I guess that's what happens when you have 3 kids in car seats.

 

 

* we really wanted to not buy a new car. but when we went to a car seat safety check earlier this month they told us that, although we could buy two new narrower convertible carseats for E&K and fit the infant carseat between, we would not be able to fit two booster seats and anything into the prius (because of the specific way the prius seats are shaped and boosters are installed). since we do plan for the kids to move to booster seats in the next year-ish we figured we'd just bite the bullet now and not live super squished for a year just to buy a car the following year. so... voila!

 

 

 

more name clues

Oh man, this has been so fun to hear all y'all's guesses. Danielle is "winning" thus far; she has guessed the girl middle name and the boy's first name. For the rest of y'all, here are some additional clues:

• All names are between 4 and 7 (inclusive!) characters long. None are 6 characters long.
• All names start with consonants. None of the four starting consonants are the same.
• We think we're using the most common spelling of each of the names. The exception might be the girl's first name, which I'm just not sure about. But, there are no normal names like "Heidi" where we decided to spell it "Hydee" or something crazy like that. No intentional craziness. :)

Also, I'm using this website to calculate scrabble scores: http://www.thekatespanos.com/scrabble-score-calculator/. I don't actually own scrabble to do it myself, and that website is easy! There's nothing funky going on with triple word scores or anything else like that. :)


Hints about the girl middle name:

Here's how Danielle guessed the girl's middle name: She walked in to my office and told me I was driving her crazy with guessing! I said, "start w/ the girl's middle name, it's the easiest." My boss says, "oh, I'll help" and proceeds to rattle off 10 or so random but common girl middle names. I said, "yep, it was one of those." Danielle returns a little while later and says, "it's xxxxxx; I recognized it as your xxxxxx's name and I just checked the scrabble score." I said, "yep, you're right!"
What should you take from this story?

1. It's such a common name that my boss happened to rattle it off.
2. Danielle recognized it as a family name. This is impressive of Danielle, but also lets you know it's not a crazy 7-times-removed relative. It's somebody Danielle has met.
3. Danielle and I do not work at work. Just kidding. We do. In fact, after I write this post, I'll probably make the final edits to our employee handbook. yippee. now you know why I'm procrastinating by blogging instead.

Names that have been guessed but are not winners:

• Brice
• Barrett
• Thalasa
• Anippe
• Indeah
• Lukas
• Nicolas
• Travis
• Trevor
• Tallulah
• Acacia
• Kite
• Marauder
• Vanity
• Board
• Lead
• Fisher

And yes, some of those last guesses were guessed by Evan. I'm a little scared to see what he eventually names his kids!

boy middle name

Last one! Our boy's middle name.

• scrabble score of 12!

Additional hints:

• you have heard of this name. I promise. But you may not know anybody with this name; I don't.
• It was blake's idea originally. :) I like it too of course.
• It's in the top 200 boy names.
• It's not as long of a name as its scrabble score suggests.

boy first name

I think we've decided on a boy's first name. it's been hard to settle on, and we reserve the right to change our minds. but... I think we've chosen.

• scrabble score: 9

additional hints:

• if you've talked to me about names, you will prob be able to guess this one. it's been on the short list as other names have come and gone, but it keeps hanging in there.
• it doesn't end in "n"
• most people will have heard of this name, although it's not a classic. if you haven't heard of the long version, I guarantee you've heard the nickname.
• it's in the top 250 boy names.
• It follows a pattern of names on blake's side of the family that I made up as a pattern. :)

happy guessing!

girl middle name

Since our girl will have such an unusual first name, we'll give her a very normal middle name.

• scrabble score of: 7

additional hints:

• if ethan had been a girl, this would have been his middle name.
• has some family connections on both blake and my sides of the family.
• this name, and its variations, are very common.
• according to babynamespedia.com, this name also has the same Egyptian translation as our girl first name. this seems suspicious. however, in other languages this name also means something about a sea apparently which is kinda like a river...

girl name

One of the fun things about being prego with E&K was seeing what names people guessed for them. Some consider this torture (of the guess-ers) but I think it's great fun (for me)! :D

So we'll start with the hardest first. If we have a girl, her first name will...

• have a scrabble score of 10.

Additional hints (which you will probably need):

• You have probably never heard of this name before. (oooh, look at that, some of you dislike it already!)
• We did not make it up ourselves though, we saw it a couple years ago in a playbill from the 5th Avenue Theater. We both thought it sounded both strong and beautiful. We joked we would name our next daughter that and now... if we have a daughter, we will!
• In a funny twist, Blake had always wanted to name Kaylee "River" and one of the meanings for this name is River.
• Apparently, it has Old Greek, Spanish, Latin, and Egyptian roots.
• More hints to come as needed / as I think of them. :)

Guess away! If you're right we will tell you. :)

catch up post

Now I'm cheating a little and writing this post and setting it to publish later. So when you see it, and until you read that last sentence, you'll think, "see, dana is posting more often" but now you know I'm kind of cheating. I'll take half credit. anyways...

let's catch you up a bit here.

• I am pregnant! hurrah!
• 40 weeks is around May 3-5.
• I have gestational diabetes (which I don't recommend) which means that if I go into labor myself they'll let me try a VBAC, but they won't let me go past 40 weeks (ie they'll give me a C-section on may 5 if I haven't already gone into labor). If my diabetes gets worse they won't let me go past 39 weeks, which is April 28.
• We decided it would be "fun", since we already have a boy and a girl, to not find out the baby's gender until it's born. Sometimes this is fun, sometimes it is not!
• The baby's temporary name is "Peaches"

• Kaylee and Ethan are doing well. They're 3 1/2 these days.
• They're in preschool 5 days a week now (mornings only) but next year we'll just have them in preschool 3 days a week simply because the carpool situation with a baby gets more complicated.
• I'm working 2 days a week; my mom picks them up from preschool and watches them the rest of the day on Mondays, and Blake's mom does the same on Thursdays.

Also, today is my childhood friend Libby's birthday! Happy Birthday!