Naming Convention

As usual, we went to the hospital without a name for this kid. We had a shortlist, but while we were in the delivery room, we quickly realized that we didn't have them ranked in the same order.

It drives hospital folk crazy when you don't have a name. The nurses want to write the name on the whiteboard and on the tag on the bassinet. The doctor wants to call the kid by name to coax him out of the womb. And the person that's most worried about it is the lady who hassles you every five seconds to fill out the birth certificate forms.

We officially decided to call him Tate the night before we left the hospital. So that everyone could the announcement at once, I sent a text to all of our family members. Because I know that the entire concept of text messages enrages my mother, I called her directly as well.

My dad answered the phone. Before I could even ask if they had seen the text, he told me that he and Paige had decided on a name. Max. This didn't surprise me, as Paige had been calling the kid Max for months.

"Well, about that. I'm calling to see if you got my text. His name is going to be Tate."

"Tate? Paige, your little brother is going to be called Tate."

Through the phone, I could hear her disappointment.

When I picked the kids up from my parents', we had a have a long talk about it.

"He's not Tate, he's Max," Paige began.

"What if we called him Max as a nickname?" I countered.

"No, let's call him Max and Tate can be his nickname." I could already tell I was losing.

"How 'bout you call him Max and mom and I will call him Tate."

"Daaad, grown-ups don't get to choose the name. The oldest kid gets to choose the name because kids love the baby the most."

We finally found a compromise. She could call him Max and even make him a Mii avatar named Max. (Everyone in Paige's life has a Mii--from her cousins to Alvin and the Chipmunks. We just found out that the Wii can only hold 100 Miis. Paige reached the limit.) We immediately went in the house and created the Max Mii.

Apparently, all she needed was to sleep on it. The first thing she said to me in the morning was, "Dad, I think I'm going to call little brother Tate, too."

And that was that. He's Tate.