Morgan & Erin Dahl

Baby naming

Though Molly and I weren’t as obsessed with finding a unique name as a lot of parents today seem to be (particularly those who were one of three Jenny’s in their class), we were still quite aware that the name we chose would follow Morgan for life.

We weren’t particularly opposed to any modern naming trends (and in fact went with two of the biggies — ending in n and a traditional surname as a given name), though were trying to avoid the very top few names.  We actually spent months naming her, devoting an hour or two each Sunday night to baby naming.  We each made lists of names we liked, cross-referenced the lists, gave names trial periods where we used them to refer to her, and eventually narrowed it down to just a few options.

We weren’t actually sure we had settled on Morgan Cabot until we were leaving the hospital and the clerk insisted we fill out a name before leaving.

Even after that, it took us a while to begin consistently calling her by name, as if we were still considering other options.  Though we’ve since grown quite fond of Morgan, we really locked it in when we purchased the letters for her room a couple months ago, restricting her name to Morgan or an anagram thereof.

When we first started trying to discuss names, I was pleased to see that the SSA publishes baby name data, but was disappointed at the lack of analysis of it on the web.  So, I spent the first couple months that I should have been thinking about names making a name trend web site instead.  People seem to dig it, so if you haven’t seen it, check it out:

http://nametrends.net

A few photos

Haven’t posted any photos in a while.

Morgan had some sniffles and a little cough last week, but the doctor said as long as her temperature stayed below 100 not to worry.  Molly diligently checked many times per day.

Her hips are fine…

Morgan’s pediatrician suggested she get an ultrasound of her hips, as he heard clicking in the hip when he examined her at the last well visit.  We had that ultrasound today, and both hips are fine.  The doctor said there was some ‘looseness,’ which he fully expects her to grow out of.  No follow-up is needed, other than just continuing to watch her development at future well visits with her pediatrician.

Jim and I fully expected her to be fine.  Even her pediatrician, upon recommending the follow-up, was unconcerned.  He said the ‘hip click’ turns out to be nothing over 95% of the time.  Even if it had been ‘something,’ treatment at this age involves wearing a harness.  It is a goofy looking thing and a pain (kids don’t fit in most clothes and need a special carseat, etc.), but wouldn’t have been the end of the world.  If she were a year old or more, correction would have required surgery.

She rolled over!

She rolled over yesterday (Thursday) for the first time, from front to back (she’s 10 weeks old today).  It was greatly assisted by the way I happened to set her down for tummy time, with her arms situated in such a way that pushing herself with one arm and rolling over the other shoulder was less challenging than usual.  I’ve tried to get her to repeat the feat for the camera, but no luck.  Even if I try to set her arms up for her, she hasn’t been successful.  So it is to early to say that she ‘rolls over’ in any meaningful way, but we’re working on it!

For what it is worth, I was way more excited about this than she was.  She was just kinda hanging out on her back staring at me.  Though I think she was glad to be off her tummy.

Rolling over milestone and Morgan recognized

Morgan rolled over from her stomach to her back yesterday.  It was a completely accidental result of her flailing, not intentional, not duplicated, and needless to say we didn’t capture it on film.  But, a milestone nonetheless.

Someone approached us in Pentagon Row (our neighborhood) yesterday, and asked “Hey, weren’t you three at the Jimmy Buffett concert last Saturday?”  The concert having been 40 miles away with 25000 attendees, and us never having met this person, apparently we weren’t quite as incognito as we thought.  Morgan makes friends everywhere.

Crib Saga continues…

Well, we finally took delivery of the crib on August 20th.  If you’ve lost track, we ordered it on April 27th and were beginning to doubt that it would ever arrive (literally).  Feel free to read a recap of our adventures here and here.

The crib requires assembly and the first step of assembling any furniture is to make sure the bag of hardware matches the hardware listed in the instructions.  No go.  And I don’t mean we were missing a widget.  We just clearly had an entirely different set of hardware than was required.  So we called to get new hardware to match the instructions.  It took about a week and a half for the new hardware to arrive.

We then try to put the crib together with the instructions and the new hardware.  It quickly becomes obvious that you cannot put the wood pieces we have together using the new hardware and instructions we have.  As it turns out we originally had the correct hardware and the wrong instructions.  Jim and I didn’t notice this because the original (and wrong) instructions have the correct make and model of the crib written on them.  But apparently (and I’ve never heard of this with furniture before), it matters where the crib was manufactured.  Since our crib was a manufactured in Honduras, we needed Honduras version of the instructions and the hardware.

But really, we’re just talking some wood dowels and screws here and we have the Honduras version of the hardware (which came with the crib), but no instructions.  Seems like we can figure this out, right?  But the dowel holes on the headboard are not lining up with the side panel…so we throw in the towel (temporarily) and call the company to get the Honduras version of the instructions.  We received those today.  Of course, new instructions don’t make dowel holes magically align, but they do reassure us that we are doing things correctly.  As it turns out, there is something wrong with the right side panel.  So they’ll have to ship us a new right side panel (one of the big wooden pieces).

People warned us that putting a crib together was tough, but no one told us they were going to ship us the wrong instructions (though properly labeled for our crib) AND an incorrect crib side.  Unbelievable.

People think Morgan looks like…

…Jim.  Neither he nor I see it, but it seems everyone we meet (who comments on the issue) thinks she looks like Jim.  To hear a woman at the Buffett concert tell it, the two are practically twins!