Happy Birthday Elliott!

Elliott is a teenager today. He's an awesome kid but starting to do that sullen teen thing. You know, mono-syllabic answers, shoulder shrugs, neanderthal-like grunts, eye-rolls, that sort of thing. I'm told that's normal but I've never had a teenager before. It's driving me nuts. What happened to the kid that would squash my cheeks together before kissing my lips?

Anyway, thought today I'd talk about how we chose his name. We were determined not to find out the sex so we had a boy and girl name chosen. If he had been a girl, his name would have been Madeleine. Scott and I had gone through a raft of names. I worked in daycare and didn't want a name of a child I'd ever had. At the time I'd been working with children for 6 years. That was a lot of names ruled out. I liked Peter but Scott was reminded of one of the first kids that ever punched him. I liked Fraser after an old friend but the sitcom was really popular at the time and Scott didn't want people to think he was named after a tv show. Then there was the longest candidate: Malcolm. After both of us agreeing and loving it for about a month, someone said "hey, just like Malcolm X" and that was it for me. Really? Did I need that kind of pressure for my kid?

So one night Scott and I were driving behind a car from a local dealership. Both cars stopped at the red light. The car ahead had a licence plate frame that read "Elliott Chev-Olds". I shouted "ELLIOTT!!" and Scott said "Huh. That's not bad." And we never brought it up again. The rest is history.

I'm still waiting for my free car. Happy birthday, kiddo. I love you, babe.

kxx

(Just wanted to add a bit about his middle name William. My mother had died 11 months earlier so it was a no brainer to use her maiden name of "Williams"... if he'd been Madeleine, his middle name would have been hers... "Eliza")

k