Week 32 - A Rufous by any other name

Thirty-two weeks down and 8 to go. Do you count up or count down at this stage...??

The lack of posting for the last couple of weeks can be put down to the fact that young Ruf (and mum & dad) attended a conference in Adelaide, at which mum starred as per usual. (I tried to sneak his name onto the opening slide of her presentation, but she was just too damn smart to fall for that one. This time...) With all this crisscrossing the country of late, I reckon young Rufous has done more flying miles this aussie summer than Santa Claus, and surely deserves his own platinum status Qantas club card (like mum). We'll have to start offsetting his carbon use soon.

Apart from his jetsetting ways, he's also developed a penchant for jamming his various body parts into mums ribs, which is becoming a little beyond a joke. We've been forced to have words with the lad already and I believe we've reached an understanding. His first hiccups are far less painful, but simply bizarre, and mum's had a bout of reflux that, in all sincerity, sounded like she was gargling gatorade from a drink bottle. Ewwwk. (A wonderful sound to be woken too at 3am, I can assure you. Errr... and maybe not on the wish list for Mistress P either.)

Mistress P has also ben devouring baby books at a rapid rate, and the facts and figures are spewing forth - much (almost) like the aforementioned reflux episode. The latest to send shivers down a spine is the prospect of changing/cleaning/disposing of 10 nappies a day. Thats 70 a week. Or 280 a month. Christ-on-a-bike: a thousand a quarter. On the bright side, if we decide to go disposable (err,... like, dude, who wouldnt these days) I am assuring Mistress P that such a volume of poo+plastic put into landfill is one helluva carbon sink and sequestation program, and hence we're actually helping the environment and Rufous' future world from global warming meltdown. Ipsofacto, disposables are clearly the globally responsible thing to do. (Thanks to our media-famous-friend, collegue and mountain-bike-buddy David Jones for providing me with thatta piece of logic (was it said tongue on cheek?) - we'll think of you every time were not scraping poo off terry toweling.)

Aside from nappies and rib kicking and all the other day-to-day stuff associated with readying for Rufous, and with the ETA now down below two months, its clearly time to put the brain into drive and start thinking about a name. Cos Rufous, or as the books spell the name, Rufus, means "red head", and knowing our luck he'll be born with just such a tomato nut and hence he'll be even more pissed off with us for naming him "red head" when he becomes a precocious teenager.

Mistress P has imposed rules for this naming process which means that he will inevitably be called something generated by a random set of letters and a silent q.
Rule 1: Name shall not mean anything. e.g., Matt, Rob, Harry, Gannet (yes indeedy, my mum wanted to call me gannet. (Well, she is a birdwatcher.))
Rule 2: If his surname is going to have "Wat" in it, then the firstname cant start with s (Mistress P: "cos he'll get called swat") or, of course, t (Mistress P: "cos he'll get called Twat")

Frankly I'm stumped. We're going to have to compile... a list. I suspect Mistress P is terrified such a list will only end up published on the internet and thus a decision made upon the whim of the invisible masses. Mmm... maybe we could sell such naming rights on eBay, just like that crazy Newcastle guy selling his life. The possibilities are endless!

Anyway, names... Luckily we have the infinite time wasting (though unfortunately not infinite time) tool at our fingertips for just such a process - the baby name wizard!! (Trust me, you'll sit there for hours... really, you will. )
http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html

Names, nappies, near-vomits and knees-in-the-ribs. Only 8 weeks (+ 1 lifetime) to go. Print this post