Family Friday

For the first 4 years of Kari and my marriage, the question we've most received is "When are y'all having kids?" Most of the time we chose not to answer the question, because we didn't feel like our timeline was anyone else's business. Sometimes we chose to respond with a smart-alec answer like "After we finish perfecting our technique," which made the question exciting for us. Nothing like seeing little old church ladies blush when they realize what you're talking about.

That answer works really well for future grandparents, though my parents are hyper-sensitive about being over-involved in-laws and didn't ever ask. Kari's parents have their grandparent-hands full with a four year old and twin infants from Kari's sister. So, we didn't have to deal with that question too much from them. Just the church ladies.

Now that our timeline is out, and the answer is "August 28thish" we get to go back to all those church ladies and explain the our technique has been perfected. See... it's doubly fun!

But the new #1 question we keep being asked is about a name for the baby.

We're not telling.

Two reasons - First: we've been on the side of the discussion where someone tells us their proposed baby name and we immediately go into a conversation amongst ourself of who gets to be the one to tell a couple that "Elmo" is going to cause some poor little kid to spend an entire life in therapy. We try to hide our disgust, but it's really hard to not say, "please tell me you're kidding." Just in case we've come up with an Elmo-equivalent, we want you to be so enamored with how cute our baby is that you can't make a knee-jerk face when we tell you the name.

Second: Several of you out there are preggers right now and due before us. When you hear the name we've chosen for our little boy, you're going to recognize that it's so cute you just have to name your little boy the same thing (Kara). And then, all your friends are going to name their little boy the same thing before us. And by the time our little baby is born, he's going to be relegated to being the equivalent of "Chris F." the rest of his life because everyone in his class will have the same name. Either that, or he's going to be forced to adopt some nickname like "Squid," or "Fat Boy" or "Stinky" so people know who he is.

If you ask our name, we're going to tell you it's Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz. And what's not to love about that? It's biblical, meaningful, and original. But when we tell you that, you're going to respond "What's his real name?" thus betraying that you're not able to handle such information without a reaction, proving point #1 and reinforcing our point.

You'll find out soon enough. Hold your horses.