So You're a Photographer Now?

Some occupations are entered through an accredited system. Want to be a teacher? Get a teaching license. Want to be a nurse? Get a nursing license.

Some fields have final milestones: Lawyers have to pass the bar exam. Doctors have to pass boards.

Engineers gets jobs after engineering degrees, and business students get jobs after internships.

Through classes and accreditation and hours of on-the-job training, you can become recognized as a certified __________. It's a clear process and timeline.

The arts are different. What signifies that you've made it? What distinguishes you as having moved past a "student" of your field? When do you cross the line from a hobbyist or amateur to a professional?

Nothing. 

Nothing. at. all.

There is no accreditation process, to say, becoming a musician. There's no licensure to become a writer, or a painter. There's no exam to qualify a photographer. Or a filmmaker. Or a dancer.

You just keep producing things, and in the beginning you're a novice and at some other later point you're a professional. When do you even make the transition from, say, someone who works on film projects, to a "filmmaker?" Or someone who writes, to a "writer?" You can't even really argue that it changes when you do it for money--history sure tells us that getting paid for your work does not an artist make.

It's just this arbitrary point.

It's not exactly pin-pointable.

And I've heard others also squirm in embarrassment and fear that they know what they "practice" but don't know what to call themselves.

Man, that's how I feel.

I've been so terrified to use that "photographer" word. I think by definition I've been doing a bit of it. I've been taking other people's photos and I want to keep doing that. I'm investing significant time and resources into it. I'm reading books and learning from forums and signed up for workshops, all trying to learn and practice. I've gotten paid for it.

But somehow making a blog that says "Jennie Brown Photo" and telling people that I do this makes me feel like a big fat phony. I mean, it's not like I'm *qualified.* But I can't figure out how to qualify myself other than to keep doing what I'm doing and take a couple thousand more pictures, you know?

So, in answer to your question:

Are you a photographer now?

I'm mostly just still Jennie, and I'm just being a little more open about something I've been doing a lot of. But I'm also realizing that in order to be able to get more opportunities to do it and make it sustainable, I have to tell people that I am, in fact, a photographer.

I know I'm nothing special. It's not like I think I'm the next hottest thing to happen to photography or have some *artiste* complex. I cringe a little knowing that I'm another young Utah mom with a DSLR. It's embarrassing, really.

But I also know it gives me an adrenaline rush when people ask me to take their pictures. And another one while we shoot. And I know that I don't have to be the biggest, hottest, next thing to make something that I and others can be happy about.

And I'm really going to have to get over this embarrassment thing to keep learning and progressing. That's the other important nature of working in the arts (and, well, everything). You have to keep putting yourself out there and embarrassing yourself to get any better. Which I intend to work at.

So, without further ado:

jenniebrownphoto.blogspot.com

I hear that my social media updates of my baby can be deceiving.

People believe I have this bubbly smiley sunshiney girl. And then in person they see that she's a little fussy, and a little particular, and her tummy hurts her a lot. She also gets a little nervous and overwhelmed in a crowd.

But here's the downright truth:

When my baby wakes up from a nap, and gets to relax at home with just her mama, and her (sometimes traumatizing) older sister is taking a nap....

She just looks like this, this, and this:

And who can resist that?!

I think that giving her a bath and playing just the two of us on this summer's late afternoon was kind of exactly what we both needed. 

Sorry. She's taken.

what we've been up to

We may not be blogging, but here's a few other things we've been doing:

San Diego Zoo:

3 reasons I know I married the right person

1. At the end of the day at the beach, he looks over and says "Want to go jump in the ocean one more time?" and does a kamikaze run with me to dive through a few more waves.

2. He's really good at finding things (keys, etc).

3. He dances at weddings. 

Current status:

"We'll stay home and get so many things done today," I said.

"We'll do all the chores and vacuum everywhere and clean the bathroom," I said.

"I'll work out AND take the girls out for a walk to take books back to the library," I said.

"Maybe I'll even finish that film/photo stuff I was working on yesterday," I said.

"We'll have it all done so we can play hard all weekend," I said.

How today has really gone: 

Wake up, feed baby, bring baby into bed to sleep a little longer. Husband gets up.

Wake up to toddler whining as she tries to get in our bed. Pull her up, go back to sleep.

Wake up again. Sneak into shower while baby still sleeping.

Say goodbye to husband, help small girls eat. Change diapers a couple of times. 

Get toddler a drink, and prop baby nearby while I grab my hand weights. Start Jillian Michaels work out. 5 minutes later, jump rope to the kitchen to get more chocolate milk for whiny toddler. Interrupt dumbbell squats to help screaming baby find the binky. At minute 13, stop the DVD and decide to nurse the inconsolable baby. I'll have to get back to it during naptime.

Feed baby.
Read stack of books to toddler.

Eat hurried breakfast at 10.

Finally begin cleaning.

Put toys in basket. Put toys in other basket. Have toddler empty both baskets. Help toddler put the doll in the high chair. 

Put toys in basket again.  Have toddler empty again.

Renew library books online so we don't have to make a trip to the library today.

Visit with neighbor out front.

Hungry baby again.

Toddler crying about something sticky, which I try to wipe off, but her foot isn't actually sticky and she's still mad. Have toddler scream at me for coloring in her reading chart, storm off repeatedly throwing down and picking up reading chart. She's still angry I colored the circle pink (her favorite color at the moment).

Hold baby that apparently needs to be held. Toddler now climbing in my lap on top of baby, crying about how she needs to be held. Toddler shoving baby aside.

Get baby asleep. Pick up toddler, talk her down, sing.

Baby wakes. Too sad to be adjacent on the couch.

Both girls are sad. Both have to be held. Both are tired and both need a lap. Sing, coerce, juggle and wish for an extra set of arms. Repeat the same Primary song over and over.

Toddler down! Let nap time commence!

Baby down! Let nap time commence!

Baby flutters in and out of sleep. I realize I should stay put for a minute. Browse the internet. Pull up the blog.

It's now 1pm. We haven't gone anywhere. Still have yet to vacuum. In fact, I need to put the toys back in the basket again. No one has eaten lunch. 

But everyone is now soundly enough asleep that I may try and move these children and actually get something done. (Hint: it won't be Jillian Michaels.) 

Both children are now stirring.

I'm off!

why my baby doesn't officially have a name yet and why that shouldn't bother you

A few weeks ago, I was going to write this post. It would look something like this:

1) Does she have a name yet?
No.

2) Why not?
We don't know.

3) Isn't this still kind of weird?
Yes.

3.5) Weren't you trying to avoid this?
Yes.

4) But what do you call her?
A lot of things.

5) But ... the birth certificate?!?!
Yeah, still not worried about that. Turns out she still has a social security number and insurance and stuff.

Remember how hard we were trying and wanted to name our new baby right away?
Didn't work out as well as we'd hoped. But at this point, we're totally over it.

So what happened?

You know about the battle while I was pregnant. The search for names. The continual weight and looming of naming our unborn child. We gave it a good, honest go. We tried so hard.

The last couple weeks we felt pretty solid on a first name. My husband didn't want to tell people yet. I didn't tell a soul. One Sunday afternoon we went on a walk, and there was a headstone with my anticipated baby's name on it. There was another one that said "Greta." I know headstones aren't always seen as comforting, but this one was. It was my sign. We had a name.

We then spent considerable amount of time narrowing down our list of middle names. We went through all the tabs on the spreadsheet. (For the curious at home, the tabs are as follows: Name Brainstorm, Family Names, Alphabet of Names, Names from our Favorite Books and Movies, One syllable names, Two Syllable Names, Three syllable Names, Places, Flora & Fauna, and Top Contenders.) We narrowed down a list of 8 middle names. I know, 8 is still a lot. But it was a good go for us.

D-day came, and we got to the hospital for my c-section (a story for another day.)
My labor and delivery nurse asked about names. We didn't have one. Somehow it came up that it took a number of weeks for our last daughter to officially get a name. She laughed and said, "That's nothing! I changed my son's name when he was three." We died. Loved her even more. Well, at least we'd do better than that.

We had a baby in the evening. By the time we went to bed, a lot had been going on and we hadn't had a chance to talk about it a lot.  I thought that on Day 2 we'd probably name her.
We started talking out loud about names.
We had our favorite, but wasn't sure if it totally fit. And we were worried about some possible nicknames. And we went back to say, our favorite Top 10-ish. And just kept floating names and name combinations around.

And then, somehow it happened. All over again.
We did not have a name. We were not close to having a name. A lot of people had opinions about names. There was a lot of talk about our potential names. Our nurses made comments about names and called the baby "Don't Know Yet."

The real problem was that the two of us still weren't feeling good about the same thing. With that sweet little girl in his arms, my husband couldn't feel settled on the name we had previously thought. I still was and would've done it. But he didn't. He ended up favoring a name that was one of my long-time favorites, like from high school and college. But I didn't feel good about that one.

The night before we left the hospital we stayed up late. We took each other's favorite name and made arguments for or against it. Literal pro and con lists. I was SO determined to get a name on the birth certificate before we left the hospital. We fell asleep doing this. Woke up still not on the same page. And left the hospital with nothing there.

I steeled myself and told myself I would have a name for the baby by the time she was a week old.
On Day 6, I went through 1100 baby names (you read that right) and made a list of my favorites. I shared them with my husband. It didn't change things much.
On Day 7, we decided to call her Eloise. It had been one of the top names in the hospital. And we just started calling her that.

People asked if it was official, if it was final. I told them no. It wasn't on a birth certificate and I didn't want people getting huffy if it didn't stick. I didn't know what was going to happen! Jason and I kept wrestling over middle names. It was that strange, terrible pattern all over again. Jason didn't like some of the names he used to love, and the same for me.

Our siblings were dying. "What is her name?" "Will she ever have a name?" "What is her official name?" I had some brothers offering up their favorite names to me, saying I could use them. Or giving alternate suggestions to the name I said.

I had a sibling have a baby, who was named within the day. There was some teasing that the new baby had an official name on record, but my two week old didn't. As my brother chided, "It's almost like they thought about it before they had the baby!"

But at least we kept calling her Eloise.

She's 5 weeks old, and still Eloise. To be honest, I'm not totally at peace with it, but it does seem to somehow fit her and I'm pretty sure that's going to be her name. It was one of my favorites (in fact, on my first baby name list from last August!) but Jason didn't even like it at all until after she was born.

Her middle name will probably be Pearl.
I've had to come to terms with this one -- I like the name, but mostly just really want to avoid having two sisters who both have gemstone middle names. It kind of feels like the cheesiest/worst to me, and I do not think it is a cute pattern. But the "Ruby" in Greta Ruby comes from an ancestor of mine named Ruby Brown. And "Pearl" comes from Jennie Pearl Knight, the woman I'm named after. So the connections are to people, anyway, and have nothing to do with precious stones.

Then I got nervous about getting locked into a pattern of family middle names. Jason and I swore we'd never have naming patterns -- not because they're inherently bad -- but because we wanted to name our kids whatever we wanted and not feel obligated to fit into a forced pattern that we gave ourselves. We have enough trouble as it is.

But we might go with Pearl anyway.

So. Eloise. Eloise Pearl. Is it on a birth certificate? Is it official?
Nope.

Are people still curious about this whole name situation? You bet! We still get a lot of questions about it. My mom even gets questioned every week at church from a friend. We understand. Most people haven't met someone who took this long. We haven't, either.

Here's the thing: try not to let it bother you too much. Like we mentioned, it's not for lack of trying. And turns out, it doesn't actually affect you or anyone else -- not even Eloise! Legally she's still a person, and socially she's still just as loved. It'll happen soon enough. (Which will probably be much later than anyone thinks reasonable!)

And should a Baby Brown #3 come along? Well. ...Probably not even worth asking for a few weeks.

For the first time, I have two napping children at the same time who have recently been fed. One downstairs in her own bed. One asleep in a swing. Neither of them are asleep on me.


This might be the kind of moment that I would do something like blog --- but I might have a few more pressing things at the moment.


Happy May!




(EDIT/UPDATE: that lasted all of 10 minutes, max. Well. It was a nice ten minutes!)

overdue

When you're overdue, you start looking for every sign that you might be *just about* to go into labor.

Here's some things that haven't meant I was about to go into labor:

• getting the best night of sleep of my pregnancy
• getting the worst night of sleep of my pregnancy
• getting nauseous, faint and dizzy for hours
• contractions
• having days where I felt great and perfectly fine
• sudden very puffy feet
• sudden unswollen feet
• having fewer bladder management skills
• a sudden acne breakout
• having a perfectly clean house
• having a perfectly messy house

We were pretty convinced this baby was coming early. We also had a lot of big events going on a couple weeks ago, and somehow convinced her to stay put until we got through those.
Now we've been trying to convince her to come out (so I can avoid another c-section), and it doesn't seem to be going as well.

We've been pretty patient.
And waiting and watching.
And waiting and watching.
And waiting.

Our doctor's been pretty patient. And very amiable to our hopes and requests.
But something's gotta give soon. They can't let me do this forever. If I don't go into labor on my own, I'll either be getting a c-section tomorrow or on the weekend.

... but on the other hand, I just lost my wallet. That's gotta mean something big will happen any minute now, right?!

(can you check into the hospital without any forms of ID?)

So, no baby yet.

But I thought I'd share a project from a month or so ago.
I got to take some engagement pictures for one of my dearest friends. Here's a peek at what this chilly, lovely, afternoon was like.

and a little more casual...

And what's a photo shoot without a little plaid?

One, Two

"One, two, one, two," Greta counts.
Three is too hard to remember and too hard to say.
So "one, two" echoes throughout our rooms.
"One, two, one, two" my heart strums along.
One. Two. One. TWO.

We are so close. On the precipice of two.
Most days I can't comprehend the two, and I get stuck on the precipice.
I can feel it. Something big is coming. Change is hovering in the air.

Sometimes it sucks the breath right out of me--waking me up in the middle of the night.
Sometimes it makes me panic over what still needs to be done.
Sometimes it stops and stills me, as I realize our days and routines won't be the same.

I'm breathing in my time with just Greta extra slow and heavy. Walking hand in hand. Eating our morning cereal. Hearing her holler "HELLO!" Singing rounds and rounds and rounds of "patty cake." Lying next to her in bed and watching her eyes grow heavy and flutter to sleep. Having her cook next to me in the kitchen, and then hand me something to eat pronouncing, "It's dinner time!"

These are such sweet days for the two of us. She wants me to join in everything, and she wants to be a part of everything I do. And she's started calling me "Mama" again, instead of just "Mom," which just kills me.

"Mama. Bath. Get in!"

"Mama. Come. Rest. Bed." (Or, let's be honest, "Mama, get up!")

and the most common phrase around this house is, "Mama, coming too?"
She repeats and repeats it. "Mama, coming too?" She lifts my hand to pull me up and bring me with her. She can't stand being upstairs when I'm down, or downstairs when I'm up.

We are happy friends and companions that spend almost every hour together.

Thinking of change tugs at my heartstrings a bit. I hate that it's bittersweet.
I know I won't lose Greta to the new baby. But this sweet undivided time is precious. And the adjustment period really might be rough on her and make her angry. And our days will be different, and this time will come to an end.




...But amid the sentimental worries, there's this other sneaky excitement that has worked it's way in. I can feel it catching and taking hold over my heart. There's a new girl coming! We know her a little bit now, and we know how we feel about her now, but she is coming soon! And we get to meet her! And she will be ours!

We are sure she will add. She will add and add and add to our family. She will add joy and surprise and a whole new person and a whole new round of delights. I'm sure she will also add some layers of trickiness as we figure out how to have twice as many kids as we have now. She will also add exhaustion and worries. But we've already learned once that adding to our family is the best kind of adding.

There are no more than a few weeks left. Or maybe days. I'm already past the point I was when I delivered Greta.

One, two, one, two.
Two will be nice. Two will be right.
One, two.
One, two.

views from the backyard

A week or so ago, there was a sudden snowstorm.  But Greta and I enjoyed it just fine.

Today, things were looking a little different, but we didn't seem to have a problem with it either.

Welcome, spring!

Names: Part 3

People really don't let you forget about things like changing your baby's name. OR your baby not having a name on a birth certificate until they're a month old.

We get it.
It was weird. We're rather embarrassed about it.

So after we had Greta, we decided we had to talk about baby names all the time--whether I was pregnant or not. We could not let that happen again. We've casually discussed it on and off for a few years, and luckily, I think we've now settled on a couple boy names. No guarantees we'll use them, but we have a couple options (first and middle) that we both feel really comfortable with and that might be great contenders sometime.

However, pretty much as soon as I got pregnant again, I was quite sure that this new baby was going to be a girl. Very early in the pregnancy I was scouring for girl names. I told Jason we had to focus in on girl names since we had some boy options--and I knew that 9 months might not even be long enough for us to find and settle on something.

Jason's also been pretty set on determining a name as quickly as possible. He's pointed out: "Look. We've learned that the 'wait until we see the baby' thing doesn't actually work for us. It didn't help at all. So we have to just decide on a name. And then we're just going to go with it."
He would like to name the baby the day she is born, I think. That's approximately my goal, but I'd be fine with getting her named in the first couple days.

Well. We are T-minus 50 days until my due date. (And if this baby comes when Greta does, we're only 28 days away!) Baby Girl Brown #2 doesn't exactly have a name yet.

This is how it's gone.

• We've gone through Top 100 Baby Name lists and pulled out our favorites.
• We've gone through social security records for different decades and written our favorite names from those lists.
• We've gone through family trees searching for favorite names. (A new personal favorite is the mother / daughter combo a couple hundred years back that are named "Silence." I'm sure Silence Brown has a nice ring to it?)
• We've joked through atlases, billboards and everything else coming up with names that make each other laugh.
• I go to baby-naming websites and try fishing around for various names.
• We've made lists of things we CAN'T name our baby now that we have a baby Greta. For example, Gretchen. Some names are too close or don't fit well or whatever. We also have names that we can't name our child since our last name is Brown. For example, we get nervous about color names--like Scarlet.

So we have lists on our phones and google spreadsheets with options.

Jason and I have probably agreed less on names this time around.
We have some old lists with Jason's favorite names, and another with a few of my favorite names. He has like 6 names, and I won't go for most of them. And I only have two names, and I'm not sure that I really want either of them.

That seems to be the biggest problem. Of all these lists, we have names that we think are nice. "Sure, that's a fine name," we can say. Or we can find names and groups of names with a style we like. If we're looking at a list, we can easily narrow down which ones we like the best. But we don't love them enough to really consider naming our child that.

Some other problems.
• I'm still too fickle. Occasionally, I'll have names that I love and I'll try and convince Jason to like them. A few weeks or a few months later, Jason will say, "Yeah! That name has really grown on me." And then I look at him and say, "No. I don't like it anymore."

• Or I worry. "What if this is our last baby girl ever? What if this is our last chance to name a baby girl and we mess up because we're young and foolish?" (But who knows if this is our last baby girl or even how many children we will have or want to have. We don't have that plan nailed down and won't for quite awhile, and turns out you can't plan genders even if you try. But, you know, something else to worry about.)

• I'm also self-conscious about trendy names. I don't want to be too trendy or too 2015. I also don't want to look back and be embarrassed about what I named my child. But I have also learned that there might not be any avoiding this. As I have gone through social security lists of top names, it's become clear to me: there are TOTALLY themes to names in EVERY decade. It's really hard to avoid. And just like the names "Jason" and "Jennie" are great names that we've been fine growing up with, they might be recognizable as the kind of names from the late 80s. Similarly, our kids names will probably be pin-pointable to a certain period.
(Unless we choose the name Mary. I'm pretty sure that's the most timeless girl's name from several millenia.)

• I just get nervous about messing this up and making my child live with the results.

Some other interesting notes:
• Nicknames. My husband is a good, good man, but he has zero older brothers and has never actually been made fun of in his life. I had four older brothers who spared very little in teasing their youngest sister. I am much more tuned in to the inane names, cruel derivations, and potty-humor associations that can be generated from normal, nice names. When I bring these things up, Jason sometimes looks at me and says, "What?! That doesn't make any sense. Why would someone call her that?" And then I assure him (and my brothers back up) that kids call each other a lot of dumb things that don't make sense.

• We also play a game: "If we had to name the baby tomorrow, what would we name her?"

Right now?
We have one strong contender, but no middle name to go with it. And I'm worried I might back out and decide I don't like it sometime soon, since I've already kind of done that once. And then we'll have zero options. But we're trying to refer to the baby with a name and audition it (before she's even here! so that's improvement!) and trying to work through this.

Are we going to tell you what names we're thinking of?
No. Probably not.
Would it be a good idea for me to talk about some of these options out loud?
Quite possibly. But I still get nervous and probably won't do it yet.

Something I'm serious about:
If you have a method of either generating or narrowing down baby names that works well for you, let me know! or baby name books or websites or activities or whatever it might be. I'm game. I'd also be open to any names you'd like to suggest. We're all about possibilities and brainstorming.

Here's to Baby Girl Brown #2 -- and helping her get a name before her older sister did!

Names: Part 2

So what the crap happened last time we had/named a baby?
Right. Last time.

We were really struggling coming up with a name. It was a few weeks before the baby's due date, and we still weren't sure.

And then, BOOM, in a whirlwind of a few days, I was being tested constantly, got diagnosed with preeclampsia, was told I needed to not be pregnant any more, was induced, and suddenly we were having a baby. One of the first things Jason and I said as they hooked me up to the IVs was "Sorry, baby girl. We don't have a name for you yet."

Things got increasingly more complicated. Inductions turned into C-sections and then my baby was needing surgery and being ambulanced to another hospital where I wouldn't see her for several days... And you know, my first priority at that point wasn't declaring a name. We had to take care of everyone's health first. And then I wanted to be able to see her, which people seemed a little understanding about.

So, when we filled out all the hospital paperwork we left the name portion blank. Her birth certificate had no name on it. As I was released from the hospital, the nurse wheeling me out teased, "Haven't you had 9 months to figure this out?!"

It was a little entertaining to arrive at the Primary's Medical Center NICU. All of her tags read "Baby Girl" or "BG Brown," while the rest of the NICU babies had sweet name tags lovingly decorated by their nurses.

Family members were texting and emailing asking what her name was. After all, I had now seen her and held her and stuff. We didn't have one yet.

I distinctly remember Mother's Day. My husband and I sat with my 5 day old baby in the NICU, enjoying the warm sun coming in her corner window and mostly really grateful to be spending time all together. We tried out names for a few hours. We were a little surprised at the process. We had always thought that once we saw her it would be obvious. It wasn't. In fact, as we stared down at this little baby's face and tried to determine what to call her, it was much harder.

When the doctor passed through, he had to comment. "If she's not named by the end of the shift, I'm just naming her. Okay? Maybe Emily. That'd be a good name for her." Eventually we decided on a name we had talked about. Naomi. We had liked it, and decided we'd try it. We'd call her Naomi. We also really liked the name Greta, and talked about that as a middle name?

We wrote out a little nametag and put it on her bassinet as we left, and the nurses winked at us.

As we talked with family that night, we talked about the name.
Here's the thing.
It wasn't sitting well with me.
In fact, I couldn't even get the words out to say the name to my own family. Jason had to say it. And I was too uncomfortable to talk about it. I knew that I thought "Naomi Greta" had zero percent flow to it, but I also just wasn't sure in general.

I knew it was probably my own lack of commitment and indecisiveness holding me back, so I tried to be bold. We announced the first name "Naomi" on facebook. Pretty committal, right? Telling hundreds of people?

Turns out not even that did the trick.
As time went on, I liked it less and less. I anguished more and more. And I didn't like all the associations and pronunciations of the name that I hadn't fully considered.
For a little bit, our families called her Naomi. I didn't really call her much of anything. And then I opened up to everyone about how I didn't like it and was thinking that we might need to try something else.

Let me tell you, that stirs the pot!
I thought a 5 day old baby without a name was bad, but it really gets interesting at week 2 or 3.
I had a sweet grandma comment, "Changing it? But I've already told everyone the name is Naomi!"
"Me too, Grandma. Me too."

I didn't need a name for her. I spent all day with her and could call her "baby girl," or "sweetheart," or all sorts of things just fine. But other people were pretty sure they needed something to call her.

It really wore on me and I anguished about it. It wore on Jason, too. I still have to-do lists from those first few weeks with "NAME" written on the top of it. And by this point, everyone else was more vocally chiming in with what names they liked. I guess that's how it goes when you have a child, there in the flesh, without a name.

Finally, on her due date, we started to settle. I was really feeling much more decided on the first name of Greta. And then in the car that night, Jason suggested the middle name "Ruby."
I gasped. It was a great fit. I called my mom in excitement. We might have a name! We weren't totally settled, but we might have a name!

We tried it out for a few more days. Greta Ruby. It was feeling good. It was feeling right. It WAS feeling different than Naomi ever did. It felt like something I liked--and that I didn't care if anyone else liked it, because I did.

Finally, on her one month birthday, we took her down to county health office and got it officially on a birth certificate. Our baby girl. Greta Ruby Brown.

We reannounced.
People made fun of us for the first, oh, year. Except for when they still make fun of us.


(FOR THE RECORD: if you ever find yourself in this situation, you should know that you do NOT need to have a name when you leave the hospital. Also, it was not hard at all to get a birth certificate/social security card amended. It took half an hour, maybe, and cost $18. The process was not actually a big deal and don't let people scare you or make you feel guilty about it. If you need more time to name your child, take the time you need.)

Names: Part 1

"So do you have a name?"

...here's the thing. We aren't the people who decided when they got engaged what they would name their children. In fact, we have a really hard time deciding baby names.

To catch you up on our backstory, here's something I blogged two years ago when I was pregnant with Greta.

-----------------------

There's the standard three questions.
1. When's your due date?
2. Girl or boy?
3. Have any names?

Luckily, the first two are really easy to answer. Straightforward, and people readily accept one-word answers. But when I answer "no," to #3, people are always confused.

"No? Do you and Jason just not agree on names?"
"Well, I think we mostly agree. We talk about it all the time. We just don't ... have... any."

"Do you have a pool that you're thinking of? Some good options?"
"Not really, yet, no, sorry." (honest truth.)

"Did you have boy names but then found out it was a girl?"
"Well kind of, but, no, not really. We just aren't very decisive. And just don't have anything we like yet."

But none of those answers are very satisfying to people.

Sometimes I try and explain in different ways:
"Part of it's tricky when you have a last name like Brown. We don't want to name her Katie/Sarah, and have her compete with the other 5,000 Katie Browns that will be in the Utah school districts alone. But we don't want it to be too off the wall."
OR
"Part of me is just really indecisive. And I'd like to see this child before they're given a name. So I'm not planning on naming the child until the hospital. But I know I need to have some options before then, or else this child will never have a name. I'm working on being decisive."
OR
"We also get really distracted really easily coming up with names. We start reading billboards, and the name becomes "Ikea" or "Awesome" (pronounced ah-weh-so-meh). We've also gone through all the combinations of Light Brown, Chocolate Brown, Mahogany Brown, etc. Or other fun historical names, like Dostoyevsky Brown, or Gorbachev Brown, or... other nouns, like  Geography Brown, or Grandma Brown. Yeah, we just get distracted really easily."

Or when Jason tries to explain:
"The other challenge is convincing Jennie that the name needs to be something appropriate for a white little girl born in Utah. You see, Jennie has this thing for hispanic names, or Middle-Eastern boy names. So, we have to focus a bit."
That one baffles people a lot. (My neighbor last night: "Like WHAT?!") I don't know how to explain it either, other than I would just love a Middle-Eastern little boy that I would like to name Amir, thank you very much. And my hispanic children will be Alma (as in "soul") and maybe Nico. And maybe these will be adopted children, or maybe they will never exist. I'm still dealing with the fact that I will likely never have any dark-skinned, dark-eyed children. But Jason reminds me there might be some cultural confusion if I name a white, pasty little girl something like "Nuria," or "Amir." In fact, he does facebook and google searches for first names, and then points out to me that all of the hits coming up have last names like "Gonzalez" or "Rahnavard" or "Assaf" and that this name is not really appropriate for a scandinavian mutt with the last name of "Brown." Jason introduced me to Russian names, which mostly just give me a kick, but are similarly not appropriate. We're working through this.

So, no, we don't have names.
We don't really have options of names. We have a few contenders that might be higher than others, but I don't know if they're possibilities yet at all.
Just thought you might need the update.

------------------

Things haven't changed too much since then.

But we're now implicated by our history of having a child who didn't officially have a name on a birth certificate until she was a month old. And we have another baby girl coming in the near future who also needs a name!

To be continued...

Secret secret.

Something I wrote in January, but never got around to posting. Enjoy!

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So, we announced this pregnancy relatively late in the game. It didn't hit social media until 25 weeks along. But what might really surprise you is that our families didn't even know until after 20 weeks. I know, right? What were we thinking?

Well. Let me explain.
Last September as we piled in the Subaru and drove to Dallas, we laughed about how I was secretly 8 weeks pregnant and no one knew yet. We laughed about how when we came back I'd be very visibly pregnant with a bump and everything--and laughed about the possibility of not telling anyone until then.

I mean... Right?! Best joke/Christmas surprise ever?! Jason and I chuckled about how funny it could be. And we thought other people would have a lot of fun with it, and everyone would be so surprised and laugh and be excited. It would be great.

We'd heard of people joking about that sort of thing. Not telling anyone they were expecting and then showing up with this big baby belly. But this was different. We weren't just laughing about an idea. We thought we might actually try it, and that we legitimately might have a chance to pull it off.

So we didn't tell.
No. It's not that it was quite that simple.

When the pregnancy got scary and hard and threatened to miscarry several times, we talked about telling our families. When my sister announced that she was pregnant, you can better believe it was darn near impossible not to tell her I was pregnant, too. But for many careful reasons (aside from practical jokes), we decided to keep it down low.

It got trickier as time went along. I had to very carefully choose what outfits I could wear on webcam. We were careful with published pictures. We watched our words carefully. The week before Christmas came along, and we found ourselves back in the Subaru driving across the United States and ready to greet family... with a bit of (very visible) news.

Here are a few cautions for anyone tempted to try this at home:

1) Not even your family is bold enough to ask if you're pregnant or if you had too much barbecue in Texas.
(Seriously! Out of all of our family members, I had ONE brother say "So... what's the deal? are you great with child? Or is that a new fat belly?")

2) You start getting phone calls of people wanting to "catch up," which may or may not be related to running into their families with a very obvious baby bump that no one addressed.

3) You might notice people's eyes darting to your midsection just before starting a conversation.

4) Instead of making one announcement, or a few announcements, you actually have to announce it like 60 times as you make your way around the room at family Christmas parties. This is not the way to do it, people.

5) When people find out, they don't know what to say.
They'll say things like, "Oh I didn't even notice!" which you both recognize is pretty far from the truth.
Or they'll say "I thought you might be..."
Or another "I wanted to tell you how cute your belly looked, but... you know, you just never know."
Most options are a little awkward for at least one person. And it means you have to have way more conversations about your belly and size than any pregnant woman really wants to.

6) No one thought it was hilarious. Joke's on us.

The good takeaway from all this is that apparently most humans we know have learned never to assume someone's pregnant, at least out loud. But, turns out, our family is not going to tell this story with glee in years to come like we imagined they might.

Regardless of what they thought of such an announcement, everyone's been excited for this baby girl to arrive. We are too. And for anyone wondering at home, this is what things look(ed) like at 30 weeks:

PS: We still think that deciding when to announce a pregnancy is a very personal decision. You well might have reason to tell people at 4 weeks or 14 weeks or 24 weeks or not to announce and that's okay. We've had enough experience to learn that it's complicated and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Though we won't repeat this kind of announcement ever again, we'll still take it on a pregnancy-by-pregnancy basis as far as announcement timing.

happenings

Things that have been going on around here in the past, oh, month:

• Finding an apartment, and moving in as slowly and painfully as possible
• An absurd amount of Valentine photo shoots, as you probably saw on Facebook and Instagram.
• Haggling over all the shades of paint colors.
• Repurposing and painting old furniture to put in the girls' room
• Deciding it's probably time in my life to own my own power sander.
• Visiting Home Depot most days of the week
• Having Greta smear spackle across the front of the dresser while singing "don't touch, don't touch, don't touch"
• Playing outside in absurd amounts of sunshine and 60 degree weather
• Debating how we're going to convince Greta to sleep in her own room/bed. We'll gladly take either.
• Trying to brainstorm, narrow down, and settle on a baby girl name. Let's be honest, this is still going to take some time.
• Catching bugs in jars. Greta really loves spiders and webs and bugs.
• A President's Day jaunt to red rock country
• Piecing together my first quilt for Greta's new bed. I finished the top, and at first I was pretty proud of myself. But now I'm getting increasingly embarrassed. How all projects go, right?
• Signing up for a Mom/tot swim class with Greta because this is the last six week period that she'll be an only child.
• Missing the snow a bit. As we drove home from Texas, I was really looking forward to a nice snowy winter. I've been a little disappointed.
• Taking baby to the doctor, getting chest x-rays, and debating whether or not she has a virus or pneumonia settling in.

.... another one of these days I might even get around to posting some old drafts I have on here!

over and out.

the body image battle and my 1 year old

As every young mother has been informed by countless articles circulating, we need to be careful about how we discuss body image. I agree! But I have to admit that I have been shocked at how soon I feel I've had to confront this with my own daughter.

She's not even two yet, and pretty oblivious and happy. To be honest, she just noticed my expanding (third trimester) baby belly for the first time the other day, which was pretty funny. But the issue of her size and body image comes up with strangers constantly.

Twice in the past 24 hours, I've had someone comment: "how old is she?" immediately followed up by "isn't she small for her age?"

She is. She always has been. She's always been below the 3rd percentile for weight. 

She has a petite frame with the skinniest arms and legs I've seen on a toddler. She's scrawny, no question! She has narrow shoulders and a ribcage that can be seen at all times. She's going to bed tonight in a size 9-month onesie and size 3-6 month pants, which is unusual for most kids that are almost 21 months.

We feel fine discussing this and laughing about it even with strangers, especially because we know she's healthy and her charts all indicate she's growing just fine. 

But my mama heart starts to pound when I hear the comments that inevitably follow.

"Well, it's great that she's so petite. As little girls should be."

"It's nice that she'll be skinny, especially as a girl."

They continue. Awkward comments on how good it is to be skinny. Or the virtues of being little. Or how nice it is to be dainty. Or how great her life will be as a small girl.

I never get into it with strangers, but I think:
What are you saying?! Really?! Please. Rewind a few sentences. Let's think about these words.

And then I also get fired up with, If you only knew! If you knew the anxiety and guilt I personally felt those first months when I was working with a pediatrician and trying so hard to help her gain weight and having constant weight checks. If you only knew our battle for calories! 

And then I can take a step back and think, Sure, she might be a tiny cute little thing. And we CAN relish and enjoy that. It's fine. Just like we might comment and enjoy another baby's curly hair or startlingly blue eyes or chubby cheeks or long legs or anything. It's okay to notice and compliment and love babies' physical features. (Same with big people, I think.)

I am fine with noticing it. She is, in fact, small.
I'm fine with talking about it. I'm fine with some of the sweet nicknames she's picked up, like our friend that calls her "pixie."
I am fine with enjoying it. It IS a part of her and it IS endearing and it IS something we love about her.

But I don't want to make a huge deal about her being skinny. The truth is that neither she nor I had any control over it. And all I want for her is to be healthy. All I want for any of my children is to be healthy.

Now that I'm having a second baby girl I think about it even more. I've worried a little. Maybe Baby Brown #2 won't be petite. Maybe she'll be a chubby baby or tall or average--which would all be just great by me! But I'm worried about the dangers of comparison to a "tiny, dainty" older sister, and that strangers' comments will accentuate that. 

Aside from this other baby of unknown physical stature, I'm also worried that Greta's ears will get wise very soon and she will understand strangers' comments. And I don't want her to think she is inherently better or cuter or somehow more virtuous than anyone else because she is so little. That's not how it works and I really don't want her to think much of it.

The good thing is it'll be my job in the end--not the strangers.

It'll be my job to teach both girls that their bodies are beautiful and important. To teach them to be proud of their bodies. And that everyone's bodies come in all shapes and colors and proportions and it's our job to figure out how to keep our own bodies healthy and strong.

But all this has made me think a little more about body image. Perhaps these few experiences and thoughts all play in to this larger conversation--a conversation that certainly doesn't begin and end with moms and daughters. A conversation that includes strangers and friends. A conversation that recognizes that bodies are varied and that is careful with its word choice and what it praises. And certainly, a conversation that celebrates each body.




For a much more hilarious and insightful discussion on body image, please read Tina Fey's Bossypants chapters entitled "Remembrances of Being Very Very Skinny" and "Remembrances of Being a Little Bit Fat."

Some updates are in order:

Baby girl coming in April? Check.
New job in Salt Lake City? Check.
New apartment? Still working on it.

But mostly I'm here to let you know that Sesame Street recently released this gem:


I know, right?!

As Greta sits on my lap with a cold this morning, some other new favorites we've watched include old Michael Buble, our One Direction homeboys,  and Janelle Monae. I do have to admit that Elmo looks pretty fly in a suit, and Tony Bennett keeps it suave with a pretty hilarious parody video.