Naming of my boys

I try to make it a habit to follow the blogs of all the moms in the Mom Pledge as they come up as featured bloggers.  It gives me a chance to get to know each of the bloggers a bit rather than adding all 200 at once and getting overwhelmed.  Today, I got a chance to visit Greta at Not Enough Patience and Never Enough Jewelry!  And one of her posts (that she got from an idea bank on another site) talks about how her kids came to be named what they were.  And it got me thinking that I'd like to share how come my boys have become Teddy and Pete and the stories behind them.

Ever since I was a girl, I knew that if I had a boy, I'd want him to be named after my father.  Dad's got an unusual spelling of his name (thanks to a nurse who didn't know how to spell it, or so the family story goes) and I've always liked it.  Plus, I've always been a Daddy's girl and adored him.  For quite awhile, I didn't think I'd be able to get married or have any kids.  But then I met Rich.  I know that once or twice, we'd talked about kids names while we were dating and I told him that if I ever had a boy, I wanted to name him Theadore.  Everything else was negotiable, but not that one.

When we found out that we were going to have our first child, we had boy and girl names picked out... at least, first names.  If it was a boy, he would be Theadore and if it was a girl, she would be Catherine.  As we talked about middle names, we finally decided on middle names as well.  Theadore would have Rich's family middle name (his paternal grandfather, father and himself all had the same middle name).  If it was a girl, her middle name would be after my maternal grandmother's middle name.  I still remember the day we found out that we'd be having Teddy instead of Catherine.  I think I cried tears of joy.

And, just like his grandfather, he's been Teddy from the beginning.  When we're with my dad, we sometimes need to differentiate Big Teddy and Little Teddy.  Though right now, Teddy's going through a phase where he tells everyone, "My name's Teddy but that's just a nickname.  My real name is Theadore."  (And then Pete repeats, "Hith name ith Thedoor."  It's cute.)

When we got pregnant the second time, we had the girls name from the previous go round (though I'd changed what I wanted the middle name to be, so I could honor a friend that had passed away).  There was quite a bit of discussion when it came to choosing a boys name for the second child.  Rich wanted Peter, after his grandfather.  I just imagined the horrid amounts of teasing that my poor child would endure when they realized what Peter was slang for.  I was very adamant that he would NOT be named Peter.  I actually wanted the name Galen, but Rich refused to have him share a name with a fictional technomage, no matter how many times I told him that I just liked the name.

Right before we were supposed to find out the gender of our second child, Rich's grandfather passed away.  We would be leaving soon after the ultrasound to head to Pennsylvania for the funeral.  We went in for the ultrasound and, while I'd been hoping for a girl, when they told me that we were having a boy, I knew it was kismet and this boy's name was meant to be Peter, to honor the man that had just passed on.  When we got to Philadelphia, we told everyone in the family the news and they were all touched.

When it came to the middle name, we were able to come to an accord a lot more quickly.  I wanted to have his middle name in honor of my paternal grandfather and Rich liked the sound of the two names together.  As of the end of May, we knew what our second child would be named.

What I didn't realize until after both boys were part of the world and an even bigger part of our hearts, was that we'd done a name flip.  As I mentioned above, Rich's grandfather was Peter A.  And Teddy was named Theadore A.  My dad's name is Theadore E, his middle name after his father.  And Pete's name is Peter E.  I didn't mean to, but we ended up honoring my father and Rich's grandfather doubly.

Their names were ones that we chose for them, but their nicknames were ones that just came out of who knows where.  When Teddy was younger, I regularly called him "Button".  I don't know where it came from or why.  But he was "Button" to me from about 12 months until 3 1/2 years.  After that, he became "Bud".  Oh, I'll call him "Ted" or "Teddy" too.  They're his names.  But "Bud" is my special nickname for him.

And Pete's is "Bubbie".  Again, no idea where it came from.  I just started calling him "Bubbie" one day and it stuck.  And he's been "Bubbie" ever since.