Baby Nicknames

I have recently come to realize that I've never really gone into explanations of our babies' nicknames here. Each one has a meaning, albeit not always a profound one. We have fun naming our babies before we can give them proper names, so here's a brief description of each one.

Baby #1: Keiki

Before Erich and I got married, we decided that we wouldn't use any birth control. So we were already aware that we could get pregnant pretty soon when we were on our honeymoon in Hawai'i. When there, we learned some Hawai'ian lingo, including the word keiki. It's Hawai'ian for "child" or "kid." Erich thought it would make a great nickname for an unborn baby before we know if it's a boy or girl, if we were to find out. I agreed, and when I did fall pregnant, Keiki was the nickname for the little one.

Erich continued in the assumption that Keiki would be the name of all of our unborn babies. I assented while I still assumed that our Keiki would eventually have a real name. However, after the miscarriage, never having found out if it was a boy or a girl, I couldn't bear the thought that our first baby would never have a unique name. I didn't really think to assign a new and meaningful name to our first baby: we had already continued calling him/her "Keiki." I didn't want this baby to have to be Keiki the First or Keiki 1. Thus, the Keiki nickname was retired.

Baby #2: Vector

It took a few weeks to settle on a nickname for our second baby. I had pitched a few, but Erich rejected them. It was then decided that Erich would be the official nicknamer, though we would decide together on actual names. One of the nicknames we threw around was Wrigley, after the field where our beloved Cubs play. That was eventually rejected, however. As this was mid-November, we still stung from their extremely poor performance in the play-offs that Fall.

"Vector" came about while we were watching an episode of House Hunters, set, coincidentally, in Hawai'i. The final scenes of the episode showed what the buyers had done with the house, and they showed a picture of a bedroom in which they had put down new wood floors. I quickly went into minor conniptions, convinced they had oriented the slats wrong (perpendicular to the bed, not parallel! Wrong, I say!). Erich, attempting to understand, said something sarcastic about the vector of the angles or some such gobbledegook. I laughed that my engineer husband could pull out such math-y terms in conversation. "Ha!" I quipped. "We should name our kids Vector and [other math-y word we can't remember]." I was joking about these being real names, but Erich got thoughtful and declared that Vector would be our baby's nickname.

One time, on a long car ride, I asked Erich one more time what a vector actually is. He patiently and succinctly explained it again, and I replied, "Wrong! It's a little baby." We laughed together, so excited to start telling our family that we were expecting a baby in July. Two days later, we found out that our little Vector's physical form had never been bigger than microscopic. This being the earlier of our two miscarriages, gestationally-speaking, and being crowded into a busy December, it's easier to forget the details of my second pregnancy. I've been thinking about Vector more often recently, though, remembering our baby who never developed a hearbeat.

But now, onto happier thoughts...

Baby #3: Wrigley

On the morning of April 30, I had a feeling I should take a pregnancy test, so I did, Erich close by. We waited patiently as the field of pink cleared, the control line darkened and so, very gradually, did the test line. We shared a high five and a hug before Erich went off to work. We did it again! It was Springtime. Unlike our last two babies, this one would be due in the Winter. Unlike our last two babies, this one we would expect to take home to our new house, which we would have plenty of time to get ready for a baby. And maybe unlike last year, the Cubs wouldn't play like champions in the regular season only to embody complete losers and be swept in the post season.

Yes, this was a new season of hope for our Cubs and for our fertility, so Erich soon decided that we could use our previously-tabled baby nickname, Wrigley. It fits much better for this baby than for Vector, since I've already had the joy of feeling this one wriggle around.

And, to answer the question I've gotten a few times already in the comments, we do hope to find out if Wrigley is a boy or girl at the big ultrasound. If we do get that info, Wrigley may be known as Wrigley for only a few more weeks!