Names! Names! Names!

Well, Cheryl and I have been hard at work. The baby universe is quite the daunting environment. If you have a desire to gain incredible wealth then you should invent the next "gotta have it or else you are a bad parent depriving your child" product that retails for around $199 so that it is just affordable enough to successfully pressure, sucker, or emotionally blackmail the vast majority of expecting parents into a purchase. This product of course should only cost about $50 to produce, market, and supply to stores thus making the inventor a tidy profit margin of 400%.

So you tell us which stroller out there should we buy?

1. The X9-5000 that brews lattes and comes with a paparazzi screen (a real term from a real stroller) at a cost of $1600
2. The Mountaineer Extraordinaire with 4-wheel suspension gravity disc braking apparatus and shock equivalence sensory system (or the upgraded elite model with a faux fur lining and leopard print) at a cost of $1000
3. The Dinky 900 with the equivalent features of the proverbial shopping cart and its floating wheel at a cost of $300
4. The Consumer Reports top rated Mountain Jogger at a cost of $100

I bet you can tell where I am leaning!

To be fair the Valco stroller (the real name) is between the "Mountain Jogger" and "Mountaineer Extraordinaire" and while not as pricey as the later it has more features than the former. And so we may settle on that one afterall.

Now to the real important part, Names!

I am growing partial to the wait and name the kid after the first stranger we meet method but I am betting you, my family, and most importantly Cheryl would all veto that method.

Names are a big thing and it is a lot of pressure on a person to choose the name that another human being will go through life with. Even if our child grows up rebels and legally changes his or her name the reality is the one we gave it will still be with it. At family functions our darling and legally named Rambo Lugnut will still have that Grandma who won't give up the sweet little name we gave Rambo as she started out in this world. Now that is assuming our newly named Rambo doesn't get famous. If Rambo makes it big then everything will go nuclear with detractors revelling in reminding Rambo of her cute little ole name every time she turns up in the news.

(By the way I am calling Rambo a she merely because for a girl to change her name to Rambo Lugnut is more ridiculous then for a boy to do so and the use of this gender specific pronoun should not be considered confirmation nor denial of the actual gender of Baby Hill)

My wife and I have always maintained that we do not know the gender of our child and we will continue to maintain this until we actually do know the gender of our child, possibly on but not limited to, the date of Nov. 5. (for all the conspiracy theorist out there yes this is confirmation of the 2nd shooter on the grassy knoll)

If you have any good suggestions for boy's names feel free to share!

We really would love a name that gives the kid a sense of some purpose and some shoes to fill. Not that we plan on being the uber driven parents (as evidenced by our rejection of the XJ-9000) but it just seems good to start things off with a bit of optimism about who our kid is going to be as a person. That doesn't mean that we hope he or she will be famous but just someone who makes the world better by being here.

There I said it, I have now officially crossed the line into delusional expecting parent world!

Blessings,
Kevin
(Chery should not be held accountable for anything said in this post and is completely innocent of any possible FCC, EPA, and WGN violations that may have been committed in the posting of this message)