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Wednesday, March 3, 2010

I shall call her... "Button"


It's funny how you can sometimes spend so much time and energy worrying about doing something just right, only to have all of that intellectual effort become meaningless when the planned moment arrives.

Amelia's original name was Natalie. After a while, though, we started seeing the name pop up literally everywhere. One of Sam's key name requirements was that it not be a very popular one. Her classrooms had all been just too full of other Samanthas, and she wanted Amelia's name to be her own. So, after a little while, we moved away from Natalie and towards Ivy, then Maria, and finally to Amelia. I liked Amelia in particular because it still went really nicely with our chosen middle name of Erin. The only problem, I figured, was that there wasn't an obvious nick-name to associate with it.

In the months leading up to her birth, I tried to muse over a couple of the permutations. I like "Milly" and "Amie," but Sam didn't warm to them very much so I tried to think of something else. Most of the names were arbitrary and didn't have much to do with her actual one, and that kind of bugged me a little bit. None of this was active, foreground thinking, mind you--more like a little thing that just kept popping into my head at random. By the time Sam moved into labor, I still hadn't arrived at any kind of conclusion.

Fast forward a couple of days, and I was rubbing her little nose while she slept, saying "you're such a cute little button." Sam laughed, looking down at us, and said, "you sure do call her 'button' a lot." I smiled and looked at Sam, and then back at Amelia. "Button it is," I said. It wasn't deliberate, and that's what made it so magical. I'm honestly not even sure where it came from: I am actually not in the habit of looking at cute things and comparing them with the aesthetic qualities of buttons. In fact, I don't think I ever saw a button that I would describe as cute, or even very interesting, for that matter.

*shrug*

Funny how that works, sometimes.

Anyway, a couple of new pictures at the usual link.

-Mark

1 comment:

  1. Actually, I said:

    "I guess you've found your nickname for her, huh?"

    and he said:
    "Huh?"

    and I said:
    "Button. You keep calling her a cute little button."

    and he said:
    "I guess you're right. Button it is."

    ReplyDelete