For those payin’ attention to this lil’ blog section, you might have heard I am expecting. I am in fact due on 11/11/11. By the time this posts, I hope my son is willing to stick it out one more day to make it to 11/11/11. What’s so special about that day? What isn’t?! First off, it has the awesome triple like digits. Second, for all the gamers, it is the release date for the long-awaited Skyrim. Third, if our son does make it out on 11/11/11, we are going to name him Dovahkiin. The reason being it is an awesome name… and, yes, it comes with a fantastic prize in Bethesda’s baby-naming contest to coincide with the release of Skyrim. Now, my husband didn’t know of the contest to start with. We conceived long before hearing of it. But it’s been a tough year and I wanted to do something special for my son. My daughter has a unique name. I wanted him to have a unique name as well. I am so picky about boy names that I was having a lot of trouble finding just the right one. We’ve toyed with Dovahkiin and the ramifications of naming a child that name, and that name being based on a video game character (however awesome), and what impact that would have on him. But the more I thought of it, the more I settled on Dovahkiin, contest or no. It helps that we told all our friends and family and very few are opposed to the idea. My mom thought it was neat! He will have a perfectly normal and common middle name if the first name becomes too much for him or us or we just want to call him a nickname (which is incredibly common. My sister went by her middle name for the first 20 years of her life and now chooses to go by her very unusual actual first name. She was incensed for years that we called her a middle name and not her real first name.)

I’ve read several posts on the site and most condemn anyone who would dare name their child such a thing, all for capitalism. Well, I really don’t play many video games (TB plays an ungodly amount though), and I would never name my child a name I found horrible or even terribly mediocre. I think we’re doing a great job with our daughter and will continue to be great parents for our son, too. Naming him something so unique may only have as much effect as any person’s opinion on another. That’s all they are. Opinions. We all have them; most of us voice them. But the ones that matter most are the opinions of your family and, more importantly, the opinion you hold of yourself. I think we can enable a high opinion of himself in our son because we’ve done so and will continue to do so with our daughter. The name won’t change my parenting.

But what if he comes early? Or late? Well, I’m bringing my list of baby names just in case but we really do like the name Dovahkiin. So here’s hoping we can celebrate the birth of our second child in a way that will be just as unique as he is. Did I mention he’d have his own theme song? More coming soon:)