WHAT'S IN A NAME?

I can't believe I'm writing this as I write this :) Last night Michael dropped a bomb. He turned to face me and said, "I don't think I can deal with our kid's name being Bowen." WHAT??!

Now, before I go on, let me say that I knew this was a possibility all along. Truth be told, Michael's never been sold out or overly enthusiastic about the name, but he agreed we should tell people and play it out and call him this. When I bought the letters for the wall in his room and painted them, he helped me hang them up and said nothing. But we agreed that as time got closer, if he just couldn't wrap his head around it, we'd scrap it and use something else. Because I think it's important that we both REALLY like the name. So he's always had the veto power with this one, and last night he exercised the right.

So here we are, practically back to square one. Because I've also decided this kiddo's name isn't Gibson. Fabulous.

We've got 3-4 other options floating around in our heads, but it's looking more and more likely that this will be a repeat performance of last time (and possibly will cut it even closer), where our baby won't have a name till the last couple of weeks or so. I'm wondering if we'll really know until we meet the little dude. Oh, well. At least I've been able to call him something for most of my pregnancy, even if that's not really who he is - HA!!

It's funny because in the back of my mind I'm thinking, "WHY on earth is this such a big ordeal for us? What is so important about picking the 'right' name?" But it really is important to me. This is most likely because I'm anal with a capital "A," but regardless, it still matters and I can't let go of it.

I'm not going to put our options out here on the web, because who knows if we'll end up using any of them, and it just confuses me more to hear other peoples' opinions of certain names. We want a name that we love, that has a strong meaning, and that fits with our family. Those are things only we can decide anyway, so wish us luck (and me in particular since Michael's only job is to nix or accept each one I come across) as we dust off our baby name books and start the list making again. Yikes.