Last Friday we found out the gender of our newest addition. It was my favorite moment of my pregnancy so far. But now that I know, I am dreading picking out a name again.

With my first pregnancy we had no idea what to name Joey. Dave didn’t want to name him after him and while there were names that I liked, I couldn’t really picture any of them as a name for my son. We wracked our brains for all different kinds of names. We googled names on the internet, and we went to Barnes & Noble and poured through baby books. I assumed that eventually something would jump out and hit me. But it never did.

There were a few names that we knew we had each liked. And we knew we had to decide on something or we were going to go crazy. So we sat down one night and made a list of all the names we each would consider. He made his list and I made mine. Then we went went through each others lists and eliminated the names that the other one did not like. What we were left with was a list of about 5 names that we both liked.

We then decided to try out each name for a 24 hour period at a time. So we started with the first name on the list and for 24 hours, we would refer to the baby by that name and that name only. It was a great way for us to see if it fit in with our family. We would use the name by itself and together with his older brothers name to see if they sounded good together. Some names we knew immediately didn’t sound right, while others took a while for us to make a decision.

This was also a really good way to include Mark. We asked his opinion on names as well, and even if we didn’t like what he picked, we would still add it to the list and try it out so he felt like he was apart of the decision making. We actually referred to our baby as Mickey Mouse for an entire 24 hour period. Imagine walking through Babies”R”Us and having to say, “Should we put this on the registry for when Mickey Mouse is born?” I guess we should have planned our outings a little better for each name day.

But eventually, we found a name that naturally flowed off our tongues for a full 24 hour period. And that was how Joey came about. Now to start making a list for the new baby!