And His Real Name Is...

You all have given me some great laughs, but mostly surprise! I hope you didn't really think I'd ruin my kids life with that name and were all just being nice and secretly hoping I was joking. Too nice! From here on out, you have full permission to speak your mind if I am ever about to do something as crazy as name my child Gaylord, however perfect I tell you it is, seriously, full permission! It was so funny reading the responses almost all entirely avoiding his name, almost painful because I realized some of you must really believe it and were just trying to think of something nice to say.

You can all breathe a sigh of relief though, our son is not Gaylord, but it looks like I made a compelling argument because after almost 200 views on this, my sister is the only one that said anything about his name hopefully being a joke (which I temporarily deleted as to not let anyone else on). My dad also called me to talk to me about it and Josh's dad emailed us with the same concerns. I have to say, I've never felt so loved by our dads! (and you too Jill:).

My dad called as soon as he read my entry and my mom answered, we still hadn't arrived from the hospital. He asked to stay on the phone until I got there because he just wanted to say hi for a minute. Apparently he wouldn't tell my mom why he wanted to talk to me because he didn't want her to tell him to not say anything. She knew how long we'd deliberated about a name and he was afraid she'd try to talk him out of it. He told me he thought it was usually best to not intervene in our decisions but if there was ever a time for a grandfather to intervene, this was it. It was so priceless, I loved getting my dad who is the ultimate prankster.

Shortly after, Josh checked his email and his response to the email was even better. He goes, "Oh Afton! Oh no, my Dad doesn't know it's a joke...he is trying to be so careful in his email..." He hurried to call him because he was sure he was causing his dad serious stress. I thought it was awesome, my joke worked! Josh had agreed to it because he was sure nobody would believe it, but we fooled even our families.

Josh was relieved his dad was laughing about it after he told him it was a joke and I had to jump on to enjoy a good laugh myself. His dad and mom were with his aunt and uncle and some other family members and we managed to add some great excitement to their night. I told him I figured it had been a rotten enough experience at the hospital that we could at least have some fun with everyone at the end of it. He was a great sport about it.

And if nothing else, we figured even if nobody would have originally liked his name for whatever reason, they'll be so relieved that they'll think they LOVE the real one whether or not they would have!

Drum roll please...

We are happy to announce the real name of our perfect new son, Rhett Southam Parker.

We both love the name Rhett and Southam is my maiden name. I have no brothers, and I have a lot of pride in my maiden name, so we thought it would be nice to at least pass the name down to our son who will now get to carry both sides of his family name. I just realized I'm kind of the same, I have names of both of my grandmothers and I've always loved the connection to both sides.

The rest of the story I posted was true, we were waiting at the hospital extra hours because we hadn't found a middle name. Josh was on the internet searching ideas and while we had a few, none were great. We wanted something meaningful or a little fun and descriptive. We tried finding a name that sort of meant jokester or anticipation since he had us and the doctors all in suspense for a while and ended up being perfectly fine as if it was all a big joke to him. Then we finally decided on Southam and I realized you know what? Southams are pretty big pranksters themselves, so that fits just fine.

And we think the whole name fits him just perfectly.

Q: I'm dying to know, did you think it was a joke?
Q: Are you relieved?