Here we go again...

As most of you know, Kevin and I have a hard time picking out names for our children. Abby didn't have a name for almost two whole days of her life. Ben didn't have a name for a good part of his first day. With both children we entered the hospital with a list of about 10 names written down, and worked our way pairing them down in the hours (or, days, in Abby's case :) after delivery. And it's not like we didn't think about it or discuss it beforehand. We began discussing name possibilities almost immediately when we found out we were pregnant the first time. With both Abby and Ben, we'd somewhat settled on a name for months and then threw it out in the last few weeks leading up to their births.

But things changed with baby #3. Life is busy, the pregnancy thing is routine by now, and we knew we never could decide on a name until the last second, so why even start thinking about it in advance? (I know, I know, at this point, some of you are thinking we're crazy, but that's just how we are. :) Early on in the pregnancy, someone pointed out that Abby started with an "A," Ben started with a "B," and so we should continue the pattern and name this baby a name starting with "C." It was an intriguing idea, but unfortunately there aren't many choices for good "C" names (at least in my opinion :). The obvious suggestion was Caleb, which was fine but it didn't jump out at me (but they never did with Abby and Ben either), so we put it on the back burner. It also concerns me that if we have another baby, I'd feel practically locked into picking a "D" name, of which two of my siblings already have (David and Debbie). Oh, and we also have found out that we like adding y's to our kids' nicknames (Abby, Benny), but that simply isn't an option with Caleb. In fact, there are no nickname options with Caleb and I'm not sure I like that.

Anyway, I didn't begin seriously thinking of a name until the last week or so. I looked through names on the Social Security Administration page and I went back to look at the blog post of boy names we'd narrowed it down to a few weeks before Ben was born. Not much had changed. We still like traditional, Biblical names. Without too much thought, this time I narrowed that same list down to 4 names. I ran them by Kevin. He thought they were fine and didn't have much more to say than that. Hm, not much help there this time around.

So, by now, you are probably itching to know which 4 names, right? :o) While I'm not influenced very much by what others think, you are welcome to weigh in and let us know your opinion. The current options (always subject to change, even after the baby is born :o):

Caleb
Andrew
Jacob
Levi

Let the comments begin! Or, if you really don't like leaving comments, just vote for your favorite name(s) in the poll on the right. :o)