What's in a Name

So in the past couple of weeks I have been asked how we chose Ryder's name. And names, well they can be an interesting thing.

When I was pregnant with Lucas, after we found out he was a boy; Eric and I would lay in bed at night and look through a baby name book. I would write down the names we liked and we slowly narrowed it down to Lucas. We decided not to tell any of the family though, we wanted it to be a surprise. We gave them some clues and let them guess, but we did not tell. After he was born we announced it all of the family. Eric's sister Rachel said, I love that name. Turns out she really loved it, in fact, known to the rest of the family, but for some reason not us; she and Todd had already said some day if they have a boy they would name him Lucas. Sweet Rachel did not have the heart to even tell this to us until Lucas was about 9 months old. But all is well and Lucas is Lucas and their son is Ethan and it is just right that way.

With Alex it was a bit different. Eric came with me to my ultrasound when we found out she was a girl. He started naming off a lot of great names, such as call her Jill but we will spell it XQYZ7... really "helpful" things like that. And then while walking around the room he stopped and looked at a painting, it was a cartoonish like lady with flowers in the all the appropriate spots. "How about Alexandria Taylor?" Eric asked (the name of the artist). My immediate reaction was no way! But then it grew on me and grew on me.. and hence we have an Alexandria Taylor. (Whose painting I cannot find for the life of me)

And finally Ryder. For anyone who know's Eric very well he likes to make up songs, lots and lots of silly songs. You might remember one of his stories from this post here, so just imagine that but with songs. In fact he made up a different song for almost every baby food Lucas ate. "Peas, peas we love the peas. Peas, peas, please pass the peas..." You would just have to hear it.

Anyway, Eric pretty early on began singing to my belly: "Baby RT, my number one number three." When I asked him what RT stood for, well "round three" of course. And well for some reason RT just stuck. The kids soon picked up on it and would call him RT, not knowing it stood for round three. So I began looking at R names and T names. After a few different possibilities we settled on Ryder Trent. So if you hear my kids call him RT, don't be surprised. I mostly call him Ryder but Eric and the kids call him RT.

So that is how we did it. How do you pick names?