3 Months: The Velvet Frog

August is 3 months old today. It's been an amazing transformation from the little guy we met back in December. Especially over the past couple of weeks, his developmental progress has ramped up again. We're seeing tons of grabbing stuff with hands and watching us intently, and more and more babble. He's just much more interactive.

Here he is, the Velvet Frog, in his lime green frog suit. Happy quarter-birthday!

12 Weeks: Head Shots

12 Weeks: Costing August

A Reuters article picked up by Yahoo reports that middle-income families can expect to pay $204,060 to raise a 2007 baby from birth to age 18 (in today's dollars, according to a new Dept. of Agriculture study).

If only! I've been using a number closer to 5X that figure as a conservative estimate. Hope not, but I won't be surprised.

One of the inside jokes in my family has been my dad's legendary "top drawer" lists. If he ever needed to fabricate hard facts, Dad would assert that he had "a type-written list, in the top drawer of the desk in my office, of the past 5 times you've come home after your curfew", or "...of 7 times you failed to take out the trash last month", or whatever the infraction was.

Of course these lists didn't exist... not that there wasn't material to create such lists, and plenty damning ones! One of the more amusing images of my childhood was to envision my dad in his office, seething with anger, composing hand-written lists on legal pads, then handing them off to his secretary periodically to be typed-up!

It's possible Dad only ever actually tried the "type-written list" gambit twice or three times—maybe even just once!—but it was so preposterous to us, the kids, that it became an instant classic.

For me, the phrase isn't a "I've got a type-written list", it's "I've got a spreadsheet on that". Of course, I actually do have spreadsheets I use to keep track of tons of different collections of data. I have personal financial records going back to the early 90's. I have records on the scores of tennis matches with opponents I haven't played in more than 10 years. I have a spreadsheet going for tracking August's growth and weight development, which I've used as the source for nifty charts in previous posts.

Given that, you know it crossed my mind to keep track of what it's costing us to raise August. Collecting and recording data is like an instinctive reflex for me at this point. But I knew that such an effort had one, enormous problem. I don't mean the logistical problem (it's a cost-accounting nightmare!), or the labor challenge (imagine having to keep track of every little, or even every major item). The big problem is that it doesn't mesh with the spirit of parenthood to track such a collection of data.

It might be very entertaining, on his 18th birthday, to present your son with an invoice and know that it's something close to accurate. But in reality, I don't want to measure my son in terms of dollars. This guy is the most important thing in my life now. He's what money is for. So if he ends up costing 5X the national middle-income average, I say he's welcome to it.

12 Weeks: Favorite Parrot

12 Weeks: New Friend

Welcoming Dexter William Koffel, first of Augs' Friends (new blog roll widget).

11 Weeks: Bah Bah Black Sheep

August's favorite song is "Bah Bah Black Sheep":



Bah bah black sheep, have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.
One for the Monkey Moon and one for the dog;
One for the boy we like to call the Velvet Frog.

11 Weeks: Two Bears

Frame grab from the same photo-session as last post.



No more bear suit pictures, I promise.

11 Weeks: Bear Suit

Some footage of August in his bear suit, plus a couple of stills that Mary shot.

10 Weeks: Bear Suit

August in his bear suit. He's the cutest growler.



He's just so damn cute in it! Check this guy out.

10 Weeks: Activity

It's been a three day stretch of anger and retribution. I can't say we've seen much progress over the past few days, but here's a photo from about a week ago that shows him goin' nuts with a plastic piggy while hanging out in the cool recliner his auntie gave him.

10 Weeks: Name Game - Bad Names Article

Saw an article in the New York Times online, A Boy Named Sue, and a Theory of Names. It didn't give me too much new information; having a unique, bad, or cross-gendered name doesn't necessarily have long-term negative consequences (as research from decades past had suggested). Most significant thing I learned is that there exists an American Names Society. From their website I learned that there exists an academic field of study around names and naming practices. It's called onomastics, and it includes naming of all things, not just people... place-names, thing-names, etc. The Wikipedia article on the subject mentions a sub-branch of onomastics, anthroponomastics, the study of names of human beings, and the subject near and dear to the heart of this blog.

Even before I learned all this, I already had some doubts about some of the things I wrote in my last Name Game post - much of which I presented as statements of fact even though they're really mostly just personal aesthetics. I'll spend some time researching the given wisdom on this subject so that I might assess my own theories against those of people who actually know what they're talking about. Stay tuned.

10 Weeks: Name Game - Syllables & Cadence

My friend Martha made a good comment on my Name Game - How-To post, regarding syllables in kids' names. She is of the opinion that, to prevent shortening and lengthening of first names, two syllables is the optimal number for a kid's first name.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I don't think you can really prevent people from inventing little nicknames, regardless of how many syllables. Nicknaming is less about shortening than it is about making something accessible, easy, less formal. My name, Waldron, has only two syllables, yet people have been wanting and trying to call me Wally and Waldo forever. I fully expect August to have to spend some effort fending off Auggie... or accepting it, which I hope doesn't happen!

So as an addendum to my How-To post, here are some guidelines on syllables and cadence, some of which I had previously touched on in my Rules post, back when we were still searching for a name.

• An odd number of syllables is more rhythmic
  

The normal speaking cadence in English favors an odd number of syllables. If your last name has an even number of syllables, then you're in luck, because you can make it so that no matter what "version" of your child's name someone is using, there will be an odd number of syllables.

The three main "versions" of identifying a person are First (Eliot), First-Last (Eliot Faulkner), and Full (Eliot Watson Faulkner). If first-middle-last goes odd-even-even, then each version will turn out with an odd number of syllables.

Many will note that we didn't follow this advice ourselves. Just goes to show that all advice and wisdom must be taken with grains of salt and weighed against other factors. In our defense, I will say that having all the names use the same number of syllables creates a rhythm all its own, especially in the Full version. And that our son's name has the feel of a quarter-note for each name... August is just two eights and Eliot is two sixteenths followed by an eight... both have the same duration, really.

• Keep stressed syllables separate

Assuming you agree, why do you think Lainey Faulkner works and Elaine Faulkner doesn't feel like it works as well? Again, because of the rhythms we tend to use when speaking in English, it's best if the stressed syllables in a name are separated by one or more unstressed syllables. AUgust WATson FAULKner flows. But eLAINE FAUlkner doesn't. It's not a knock on the name Elaine, which is beautiful, but it works best when paired with a last name which doesn't begin with a stressed syllable. For example, it works great for my friend eLAINE mcCLAY.

It's all because, in English, we swing our speech... think iambic pentameter. Elsewhere, speech has more a "march" feel, or a jungle beat feel, or something else. They all call for different cadences and therefore, names don't always sound ideal across languages. We prefer Elaine, with the downbeat on LAINE. Elsewhere, they prefer Elena, downbeat on EL. Cadence matters, and it's cultural.

9 Weeks: Chatty

August has become increasingly chatty this week. It seems like he's getting more confident in what he's saying. Here's some video of a moderately chatty conversation he had with Mary earlier tonight.

9 Weeks: Name Game - Ten "Worst" of 2007

Article today on MSN on the 10 worst names of 2007. Specifically, they mean ten names celebrities used which failed to impress the editors of Nest Baby.

I'll say this up front... I actually suggested one of these names when Mary and I were hunting around for new material, after we had blogged all our other choices to smithereens. It never got passed the "how about Blah" stage, but nevertheless! I'll leave it to you to guess which was suggested. The 10 worst, for the record, were:

• Ptolemy
• Magnus
• E-
• Story
• Ever
• Heaven Rain
• Alabama
• Princess
• Evan (for a girl)
• Superman

OK, so Ever was the name I thought might have been a possibility for us. It was just me trying to get close to Everett, which was another name I liked.

The problem is that celebrities can get away with naming their kids all kinds of whacky things the rest of us just couldn't. It's not fair to judge them... in a way, the sort of need to go off the deep end when they name their kids.

To me, the worst names of 2007 are actually the most popular names from 2007. Top 5 each, for boys and girls, were:

• Aidan
• Ava
• Braden
• Abigail
• Kaden
• Cailyn
• Ethan
• Madeline
• Caleb
• Isabella

On the surface, some of these aren't bad, but the very fact that they were in the top 5 for popularity of the gender has to be an immediate strike against each.

Isabella made an appearance on our list of possibilities for girls because it was the only name we knew that could actually save a girl some money. We learned that the charter for the Isabella Stuart Gardner museum here in Boston states that any girl named Isabella gets free admission. If the trend continues for the name Isabella they may have to revisit that policy.

For those of you who didn't pick up on it, four of the top seven boys' names for 2007 were Aiden, Braden, Kaden, and Jaden. Are you kidding me!? Hayden was #11 in 2006 (dropped to 54th this past year). Ethan was #4; doesn't perfectly rhyme, but still... close enough. I have an apparently trend-setting friend who named her son Caden about a year ago... much better with the C than the K, but we've covered that before.

9 Weeks: Mother and Child

9 Weeks: Name Game - How-To

Since I'm such a philosopher about names and naming kids, and since I'm doling out so much unsolicited advice, and acting like the baby-naming expert, I thought it couldn't hurt for me to create a guide, a sort of How-To on choosing a baby name.

Here goes:

• Always remember, you're choosing a name on behalf of your child.

Most of my suggestions are guided by this single, over-arching principle. In an ideal world, people would choose their own names, but since it'd be at least 20-25 years until they'd be able to choose an appropriate name for themselves (maybe more!), that duty falls to you. So this is not an event you should use to satisfy your own little whims, or to honor an ancestor, living or dead. It's not to make your parents happy. Tradition is nice, but the question isn't whether your family will be happy that you've followed a family baby-naming tradition, it's whether you think your kid, in his/her world, will be happy to have been a part of it. All of you who are naming your children Barack—I understand the sentiment, but your child may not grow up to fully appreciate it. It's her name, not your name for her. It's his name, not a family legacy.

• Keep your name-selection process private.

I blogged about this in detail previously, so I'll only recap here: outsiders will rarely take the exercise as seriously as the parents, so outsiders' advice tends not to be as thoroughly considered. Also, outside advice gets more weight/credibility than it merits, and distorts parents' thinking processes.

• Imagine a broad range of possible "life contexts" when considering possibilities.

I get a ton of traffic to this blog from people searching the keywords "cowboy names" and "flapper names". If you're a Texas cowboy yourself, you may well think it appropriate to assign your kid a great cowboy name. But it may not be a safe assumption that your kid will become a cowboy, or stay in Texas where the name Buck might be considered kind of cool, rather than awkward, silly, provincial. We weren't satisfied with any name we didn't think would work equally well for a senator, a rock star, an athlete, or an author. If we had been more comprehensive we'd also have spent more time considering regional effects. August will work great if spends a lot of time in Europe. But for all we know, in California, or the deep south, it might only ever be used for girls these days. If it is, our kid may someday grow to resent the name.

• Be cognizant of the current trends.

Why does the name Mabel instantly conjure the impression of an old lady? It's because Mabel was a hot, trendy name in the late 19th century, and its popularity tailed-off suddenly in the earlier part of the 20th century. In the decade starting 1900, about 0.5% of babies (about 1% of girls) were named Mabel. By the 1930's, the name was about 1/100th as popular, being given to about 0.005% of babies (.01% of girls). Today it doesn't even register. In the 1990's, Justin was the 17th most popular name for boys (60% more popular than Mabel was in the 1900's!). It came out of nowhere; but in the 1960's it was just 301st most popular. Now it's beginning to tail off. Boys who were named Justin in the 1980's will never feel they were given a strange name, and I can tell you from experience that being a young kid with a weird name isn't always pleasant. But now that I'm an adult, I really like having a unique name, and Justins will never feel that way. If the current trend for Justin continues, by about 2050 or 2060, the name Justin will seem just as antique as the name Edgar does today. Most parents know the Name Voyager. I recommend it as a tool for researching current and past naming trends.

• Give the kid options.

Regardless of what you decide to call your kid, think about giving him/her as flexible a name as possible—go with the longer form, even if you plan to use a shorter form. Before we knew we were having a boy, Mary and I spent some time debating possible girls' names. I've always been partial to the name Katie, and for that reason, suggested we name a daughter Katherine. Mary liked Kate, but not necessarily Katherine. Her idea was that we could possibly just name the child Kate; we could use Kate or Katie day to day, and we could avoid Katherine (which is a fine name, just not our favorite). I thought that even if we never used Katherine in its full form, we should still name the kid Katherine so that she could go by that more formal sounding name later in life, if she wanted/needed to. Mary and I disagreed on this. Personally, I don't see why we'd intentionally limit the possibilities open to a child just because we didn't love a name... maybe she would love it. I don't think Mary is convinced on this point as of right now, but this is my blog so... there it is!

• Consider all the permutations.

It's advice you'll find in almost every baby book, but it bears repeating. Be sure you're not accidentally giving your child awkward initials (no one wants their luggage emblazoned "ASS"), or something can sound like something else (Shanda Lear), or combine amusingly with your last name (Barry Coffin). Don't forget to check initials in combination with the last name. If your name is Farf, don't give your child the first name Roger (R. Farf). People spend a lot of time worrying about how nicknames might be twisted around on the playground and used as teasing material, but other than for ridiculously mockable names, I'm not sure it's worth worrying too much about that. If a kid's going to be teased it'll happen regardless of his/her name. Bullies are perfectly happy choosing a new name to use for teasing, so you're really not providing any real shelter.

• Enjoy!

I thought the process of choosing our boy's name was a lot of fun, if sometimes wrought with peril! Enjoy it, and good luck!

9 Weeks: Post-MD Video

Video from yesterday, after we got home from the doctor's.