Tikki-Tikki-Tembo

My family has this obsession with baby names, I think.  I found this baby name book a few years ago at a garage sale and it's the best purchase I've ever made.  Maybe not the best but it was a pretty good purchase.  Anyways, I had Meredith bring the book to North Carolina for Thanksgiving so I could take it back to school with me because I missed it so much.  My uncle laughed at me for obsessing over a baby name book and then I told him to read it and he was sucked in for a good half hour.  I told you it was good!  It's not a normal baby name book, that's for sure.  Meredith was depressed that I took the book, so for Christmas she got another copy of it.  A newer edition but I'm not jealous.  Mine is the original!

The other night, Eli, Meredith and I sat in my room for an hour looking at names.  Please don't judge us.  It's quality time together.

Now I'm going to take some time to reflect upon my own name.  Abigail.  I haven't always gone by Abigail.  Through my senior year of high school I went by Abby.  For some odd reason in eighth grade I changed the spelling to "Abbi" but that only lasted a year.  Although one friend still calls me "A-B-B-I" and spells it out for me.  I decided that college was a new chapter in life and since no one knew me I could go by whatever the heck I wanted.  I could have gone by Fransisca and no one would really know the difference.  It took some time to get used to introducing myself as Abigail because the name was new to me too.  But I like it and I stuck with it.  When people asked if I preferred Abby or Abigail I would say Abigail, although for some reason I always felt a little guilty...like I was making them work more because it's an extra two syllables.  I'm over that now.

I really like my name and now it feels weird coming home and calling myself Abby.  It doesn't feel weird having people call me that because that's how everyone knows me.  But if I introduce myself to people it takes a second to make sure Abby comes out.  If I say Abigail, I get strange looks from my friends.  And I don't need more strange looks than I already get!

According to my trusted baby name book, Abigail is an old-fashioned and intelligent name.  I can live with that.

I think I'm going to call my kids their real names from the get-go so they don't have to do this whole "what should my name be?" crisis.  And I like long names.  Not Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo long but they're going to be solid.  Not like Chang.  That's just wimpy.  No offense. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about you should wikipedia "Tikki tikki tembo" or just become better acquainted with Children's literature...it's one of my favorites).

Last Christmas Zach got me a book about preparing for marriage.  This year he got me "What to Expect When you're Expecting" (Next year I think I'll get him a book on retirement...).  I'm not going return it since someday it'll be useful, but I definitely won't be bringing it to school with me.  I don't think it would look good to have that sitting next to a baby name book in my room....

Moral of the blog post: If you're ever bored, try reading 1) 100,000 Baby Names and 2) Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo.