What's in a Baby Name? Part II: The Other Names

I didn't want to overload my already long post about baby names, so here's the second part with the other names that were under consideration but not yet mentioned. They were all suggestions by me (unless noted), but not necessarily supported (in fact, usually not) by Mark.

Boy's First Name

• Simon (Mark suggested this but doesn't remember doing so)
• Lucas
• Samuel/Sam
• Andrew/Drew

Girl's First Name

• Lily (Mark's only serious suggestion)
• Daphne
• Elise or Anneliese
• Mona
• Paulina
• Carolina - the Italian pronunciation
• Eve
• Lila
• Eliza - maybe Elizabeth as full name
• Rebecca/Becca
• Kira/Keira
• Natalie
• Sonia/Sonya
• Anna - Ben and Anna could be "Banana"

Boy's Middle Name

• Jude
• Patrick - after Patrick Pup
• Wiley
• Harrison

Girl's Middle Name

• Eva - my grandmother's name
• Lily
• Cate

And then there are the suggestions we received (and the persons making the suggestions in parentheses)...

• Duke and Ruke - an homage to characters on The O.C. (Brendan and Lila)
• Keaton and Mallory - I'd already been considering Alex and Mallory; after all we did enter our wedding reception to the "Family Ties" theme (Brendan and Lila)
• John Ratzenberger Pilloff and George Wendt Pilloff (me)
• Clamato and Chelada (Lila)
• Dalton and Castle (an homage by Lila to Road House and Dirty Dancing)
• Swayze and Patrice (Jason)

Not Nick and Mallory?


"eh Cahhh-la. Did you know that some boy/girl twins are identical?"

• Mercator and Magellan (someone at the Google Maps picnic)
• Larry Appleton Pilloff and Balki Bartokomous Mikulis (Jason)
• Boner and Cockroach (Lila)
• Goofus and Gallant (Mark)
• Alexander Wheatsworth Pilloff III (Brendan)
• Benediktas as a middle name in tribute to my grandfather's first cousin, the last Mikulis in Lithuania who has an interesting life story involving killing Nazis and Soviets and sleeping in coffins where his fingers were chewed by rats (Brendan, Rachel R. and my dad)

Balki Bartokomous Mikulis? Don't be ridi-cool-us!


Goofus and Gallant in the future

Showering for 4, Part III: The Games

This was the logo made for the shower and used on the Evite and signs outside. Look familiar?

Game #1: Everyone had a picture on their backs of a famous set of twins (e.g. Luke & Leia), a famous parent of twins (e.g. Julia Roberts), or a famous person that has a twin, whether or not they're known for having a twin (e.g. Justin Timberlake). They then asked other people yes or no questions to figure out the identity of their pictures. I had Ricky Martin who apparently is the father of twins, and I thought was of medium difficulty. I thought Mark had the hardest one with Ann Landers and Dear Abby, just because it's hard to guess their field (not acting, sports, or music), until I saw Drew's. He had Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski who, as everybody knows, are the President and Former Prime Minister of Poland.

The eyes? The cheekbones? Come on! Who doesn't know that Lech and Jaroslaw are twins?

Game #2: Baby bingo! While Mark and I opened gifts everyone got a bingo card with the spaces occupied by a combination of 1) gifts we might receive (onesies, blankets, something with elephants) and 2) things I might say when opening gifts. I never realized how often I started sentences with "sadly," "thankfully," and "in my defense."

Oddly enough I didn't mention Patrick Swayze even once. Well... until I got this:

But that's just baiting me.

Mark's mom sent us adorable crocheted animals.

Mark off a space on your Bingo card if you have "something with lions."

It's a zoo... plus a dinosaur!

The prizes for the games were socks with crazy prints inspired by my own odd collection of socks, which includes eyeball socks, toe socks (one has cow spots and the toes are udders), as well as socks for nearly every holiday.

Game #3: This was a The Price Is Right style pricing game where we had to rank 12 baby items in order from most to least expensive, and also guess their prices. I think Mark had the second lowest score (you can tell who made the registries).

This card shows the answers, but who knew diaper cream was so spendy?

We ran out of time on our club room reservation so we continued the festivities in our apartment and played the final game. (Unfortunately there wasn't enough time for Lila's chocolate fondue.)

Game #4: Because of my love of TV in general, and 80s sitcoms in particular, Brendan put together two sitcom quizzes. (He and Lila also made TV based games for our bridal shower and one of these was later integrated into Brendan and Jon's awesome online game, Celebrity Guess Who.) The first quiz dealt with identifying the type of floorplan different sitcoms had - whether the kitchen was on the left or on the right of the living room. The floorplans were taken from this site. For the second quiz we were given a blank map of the U.S. and a list of sitcoms and told to identify the city where each show took place. (My favorite two things - geography and TV!) The actual quiz is here. The answers were taken from this site. (There's also a cool map also just showing New York City shows.)

The favors were packets of tea with commemorative "evil David Hasselhoff" seals.

Does KITT also have an evil twin with a goatee?

"Deliverance" Delivery?

(I'm a bit behind on posts due to both a pre-term labor scare which landed me in the hospital - I'll report on this soon - and my attempts whenever I'm online to figure out what baby gear we need. I wrote this post a month ago but haven't gotten around to posting it until now.)

I felt Twin B (the girl) kick during Road House and then after that Twin A (the boy) enjoyed kicking me all week. Mark got to feel it too. However, I didn't feel Twin B kick again the entire week so I contacted my doctor. She said it was so early in my pregnancy it was probably nothing to worry about but that if it would alleviate my worries I could come in since she hadn't seen me in awhile. What nervous mother-to-be wouldn't say "yes"?

I had thought that the boy was on my right and the girl was on my left. That's sort of true but they're still migrating to those positions. Right now the boy is in front of the girl. So apparently that's why I feel him kick much more often. Since the appointment I will notice the girl once in a while get a good kick in on her side.

I also heard their heartbeats for the first time. The boy's was unmistakable and really loud and fast. Because the girl is behind the boy I couldn't really make out the her heartbeat (though I saw it on the ultrasound), but the doctor could. I thought it sounded like a static-y CB radio.




Membrane between the twins. I'm not sure about that random sphere.
How'd that 80s plasma ball get in my vagina?!

80s plasma ball, don't hurt my lady parts.


When the doctor and I watched the ultrasound, she said the twins were swimming around with their heads next to each other "kissing."



Both heads next to each other, possible kissing. Insert Dueling Banjos joke.

I told Mark and he said we're going to have to make them stop doing that when they come out. I suggested we name them Luke and Leia. He said it should be Angelina Jolie and whatever her brother's name is.


Real Angelina and her brother.

Fake Angelina and her brother on Saturday Night Live with their love child, Kerplixik.

Nobody Puts Baby in a Coroner

I already know this post will be more about Patrick Swayze than the babies...


I felt kicking and it was during the worst movie ever made!

I was supposed to feel kicking between weeks 18 and 22. And for a week I'd feel a little shudder at times but thought it could just be my stomach gurgling. And then Sunday night (halfway through my 20th week), I felt it again but slightly more so. And then I looked down and saw my stomach move!

We were watching Road House at the time. You see, my birthday is the same date (different year of course) as Patrick Swayze so I decided to celebrate my birthday "Swayze style" by forcing my friends to watch watching Road House with my friends for the first time. Mark got me a cake that had Swayze written all over it, and Lila gave me a musical Dirty Dancing Christmas ornament that repeated different quotes from the movie. Brendan put together a game where he took pictures of Patrick and his brother, Don Swayze's co-stars and made them virtually unrecognizable with Photoshop filters. We all had buzzers and tried to see who could first identify the co-star (each person had four levels of obfuscation from crazy hard to none). Here's the awesome game (which is on the verge of taking Facebook by storm).


My Swayze cake perched on my baby bump.

Brendan was so inspired by Road House that he made a website:
Everything I Needed to Know I Learned by Watching Road House

But I digress.

Patrick Swayze was probably kicking ass and taking names, shirtless no doubt, when Twin B (the girl) started kicking. I twice put Mark's hand on my belly to feel it, but Twin B felt performance anxiety and stopped.

I've felt kicking daily since then. The first kicks during Road House were from Twin B, but it's usually Twin A (the boy) kicking up a storm. Mark has felt them kick many times now. I read that baby kicks feel like butterflies, but I thought they felt more like flutter kicking in water.

This party was in August. And two weeks later Brendan and I sang a karaoke duet of She's Like the Wind. Sadly, Patrick passed away a week later. That day I received three condolence gmail chat/text messages. Here's the transcript of me learning the news on Gmail chat:

5:30 PM Brendan: my sincerest condolences on your loss.

me: what loss?

Brendan: <>

i can't bear to break the awful news.

5:31 PM me: not swayze!

In case you're interested, here's my Patrick Swayze decor:



This sign still hangs in our living room.

I think in total I hung 20 pictures illustrating Patrick Swayze's moods. Again, they are still up. A few are below.

Yeah, this post was about 95% Swayze, 5% babies. Sorry.