Peanut Program at Progresar

Our neighbors, the Smiths, are the greatest blessing we could possibly have here in Colombia. They have been family to us and helped us navigate this whole parenting thing in innumerable ways. They have taken us to appointments, brought us the occasional meal, invited us to holiday gatherings, and taken Peanut away from us for a few hours to make all of us better people - to name just a few. We could not be more grateful for all they do for us.

So, you can imagine that we were all ears when Fanny came to ask if we would do her a favor. "¡Con mucho gusto! ¿Cómo te podemos servir?" With pleasure! How can we be of service?

After having worked in a bank for many years, Fanny decided to follow her true passion and go into education. Rather than becoming a teacher, however, Fanny decided to open her own school. It is called "Progress", and is located in the town adjacent to Barranquilla, Soledad. The center has both a pre-school and a primary school and serves a vulnerable population of kids on a shoestring budget. We had been invited to visit a couple of times, and I even gave the reflection at last year's graduation service. The school is Fanny's passion, and she takes it very, very seriously.

"Could you do me a favor? It has to do with the school", she said.

"Oh, sure. What do you need? How can we help?"

"Well, I was just wondering...would you all allow me to use Peanut's name as the name of the program I want to start for the kids to help them develop their values and strengthen them as people?"

"Umm...yeah. Sure. Wow."

"Thank you."

That is what we could do for Fanny. She loves Peanut so much that she wants to make sure that she is remembered whether she is around this place or not. She wants to to have Peanut's name on a program for her kids so that Peanut will always know she was important to her. So no, thank you Fanny. Thank you. 

Exploring our Options

This post could be about a lot of things - most of them options that seem to be available in the United States but not so much here (where/how you want to give birth, quick and easy but healthy eating, infant car seats, etc) - but nothing so heavy as that this go around.  It's back to names...

I mentioned before that names are tough, and we have some extra requirements that make the decision a little more challenging, but there are some names that I can rule out no matter where I live.  The unfortunate thing is that most of them show up when you look up my name on Baby Center.

Now, there are a ton of pregnancy-related web sites out there.  I mean, a ton.  So pretty early on we just picked one and have stuck with it.  Baby Center sends out emails several times a week with various updates.  Every Thursday it tells me I have begun a new week and talks about Peanut's size and development.  Other days it is information about healthy recipes or pre-natal testing or...baby names.

As it turns out, I don't care what names Jamie Lynn Spears is considering, nor am I likely to look to the movie Twilight for naming inspiration.  However, I thought the "Baby Name Explorer" looked interesting, so I put on my explorer hat and went to check it out.  The deal is, you put a name in their name finder and then you can look for sibling names (because of course you want to coordinate your children's names as you do their outfits...), or you can look up "suggested names."  I have no idea where these suggestions are coming from, but I thought it would be fun to see what came up when I put my own name in the database.  You know, just for a lark. 

That was wrong.

In case you are curious, or you really wanted to name your next child Mamie but you felt it too embarrassing an homage (it's not...), these are some of the other options the Baby Name Explorer suggests that someone who was considering the name Mamie might also like (in no particular order, too hard to choose from the bounty...):

Hattie 

Queenie (I didn't think middle school could get worse, but I think this would do it)

Mabel

Maeve  (substitute teacher nightmare)

Pippa

Prudence (seriously?)

Maisie

Magnolia (oh sure...)

Mathilde

Pepper (not Salt?)

Pearl

Clementine (oh my darlin'...)

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Mamie ranks 5,894 on the list of popular names for Baby Center.  I'm sure 2010 will bounce me into the top 10.

At any rate, feel free to do your own exploring, but don't say you were not warned. 

What's in a Name?

This naming stuff is hard.  In Genesis 2 God brings "every animal of the field and every bird of the air...to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living thing, that was its name."  I don't know how Adam managed it.  Perhaps getting to name a blue million creatures makes it easier because you can basically choose every name you could ever want and still have things like a blobfish or a star-nosed mole left to just sucker punch.  Regardless, the power of naming something is significant.  You have to think about middle school, initials, possible disturbing rhymes, etc.  And, of course, it is just the start of the big decisions to be made in the upcoming years. 

Richard and I have an extra trick with Peanut because we want to find a name that will work well in both English and Spanish.  I am not a fan of "translated names."  To me, your name is your name, so if it is Santiago then I want to call you that and not James.  It is why Richard is called Richard here (okay...Reeeeechar) rather than Ricardo, and why Mamie is just Mamie.  But Mamie is not simple (anywhere, I know), and I certainly deal with my fair share of "Mommy-ay," so we want to find names we like but that also come out of Texas, North Carolina, Illinois, and Colombian mouths fairly well.  No small task. 

So, we are always up for suggestions.  Just remember, we haven't got quite as many chances as Adam did to work this out...

(For some fun you can go to the Social Security Administration website to check out how popular your name is in any given year or the most popular names in particular years.)