Big News

By Conor | December 29th, 2008 | 13 Comments »

I believe my last blog entry was mid-September. I can (and will) blame the delay on business school and how incredibly busy it is. I can count on one closed fist the number of free days I had in the past three months. Liz and I had dinner together just about every night, but otherwise our time together was severely limited, which, by any measure, is totally lame.

We are making up for lost time this Christmas break, mostly with me following her around the house and talking to her and nudging her while she is working on her laptop so she can’t type. In short, I have become a twin of our yellow lab, Emma, with the glaring difference that one of us chooses not to wake the entire household by slurping loudly from the toilet at 2 a.m. (You don’t know thirst until you’ve leapt from your bed and dived open-mouthed into the bosom of the toilet to drink its sweet, sweet nectar.)

I believe I left off last time with running a campaign for first year class president, which I was thrilled to have won, thanks mostly to my campaign promise to build a new wing on the school made of pan-roasted ham (the election was held just before lunch).

But that’s not the big news, of course. The big news is that in late February, 2009, Liz and I are expecting our first child! Woo hoo!

We are over the moon about it. We are especially over the moon because we found out that we are having a little boy, and Liz has always wanted a little boy. I am similarly excited about having a boy, though I have this fear that he will be as much of a pain in the butt as I was. And I was a pain in the butt. Thankfully Liz was a wonderful little child, so hopefully we’ve got some decent DNA mixed in there, at least 50-50. That is to say, I will happily tolerate the little guy building a fort out of burning kitchen trash provided the other half of the time he sits on the couch and coos thoughtfully.

We thought long and hard about what to name this little boy. We had been thinking of boys’ and girls’ names since we found out we were expecting a child, running through lists of names by the thousand. There are a lot of names out there. We immediately ruled out any weird celebrity baby names. For one thing, there is only room for one child named Rumer, the child of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. I recently discovered that Rumer is named after a British novelist, but when I put it into my search engine, Google asked “Do you mean Rumor?” You’d think I did, wouldn’t you. You’d think I did.

There is one glaring problem with deciding on a baby’s name before the baby is born. (I am sure that all the parents out there know exactly what I’m going to say.) The problem is that you cannot tell anybody. Or rather, you can, but at your peril.

The reason you cannot tell anyone is that people treat your baby name as if it was a mere suggestion, as if you were at the store selecting avocados, rather than deciding upon the single more important identifier of a human being about to enter the world.

The fact is, everybody has their own opinion on what the best baby name is, and they are not hesitant to share it with you. Let me offer up an example of how this typically works, say, between an expecting father and his buddy. In this case, the imaginary baby will be named “Henry.”

Father: We’re having a baby!

Buddy: That’s great!!! Boy or girl?

Father: Boy!

Buddy: That’s awesome!!! Have you thought about what you’re going to name him?

Father: Yep – Henry!

Buddy: ….Henry? Really?

Father (slightly less enthusiastically): Yeah, Henry!

Buddy (squinting): Henry? Like the dog?

Father: What dog?

Buddy: My neighbor has that dog named Henry, remember. He crapped on our porch on Sunday – I tracked it all through the house. That dog oughta be…..anyway, that Henry. I mentioned him before.

Father (slowly): Oh… yeah, well, we really like the name for our son. It’s classic and stuff. You know.

Buddy: Aren’t you worried that people will think he’s a serial killer?

Father: No. Not really… no. Why?

Buddy: Henry Manson.

Father: ….I think you might be thinking of Charles Manson – I don’t think his name was Henry. So…

Buddy: Oh, maybe. Who was the Henry that they found holed up in the Catskills with the dynamite and the hogs?

And so on. There is no easy way to get that conversation back on track. Your buddy will eventually come around to telling you that he loves the name (only after he is convinced you are not going to go with his suggestion: Timex.) And he will be lying.

However, having said all that, Liz and I would still very much like to share the name of our son with you.

So here’s how this will work: I’m going to tell you the name that we have chosen for our son. I’m going to tell you the name now, so I want you all to put a smile on your face and brace yourself. Whatever word comes out of my mouth, I want you to say “I LOVE it!!” or something to that effect. I don’t care if the word is Monkeyballs. Your expression shall never waver. It is a name that we have decided is special.

It is a traditional Irish name, popular in Ireland, and apparently there are a few of these names popping up here, but not many. Here it comes, I’m about to say it. It will appear in the next sentence, so get that smile ready. His name will be Finn Grennan.

Oh, thank you so much! Yes, we love it too.

The best name ever? Oh I don’t know about tha…oh, well, thank you so much. We would disagree if we could! Hahahaha!

Nope, not short for anything. Just Finn.

So we are happy.

And I have to tell you one more thing: just that I had been telling my study group about our baby for a while, and I kept telling them how the one thing I really wanted in the nursery was a huge giraffe. I just really wanted one. So as we were all studying for finals a couple of weeks ago, outside the door I see George and Maneet lugging this 6′ 3″ tall (!!) FAO Schwarz giraffe.

My entire group had pitched in. It was incredible. Almost as incredible as seeing the video of how they got it back to school – neck sticking out a taxi cab window, hurling down the streets of New York City, taxi swerving around to make sure its head wasn’t taken off by a bus, and thus avoiding a potentially awkward moment in the handing over of the gift.

That’s all for the moment! Happy Holidays everybody!

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