That is that

We think we have finally solved the last-name dilemma, at least: we're going to give her both. It will be a little unwieldy, but if it's a huge pain we can always change it later. And if she hates us for it, well, I'm sure that will be one of a long list of our parenting mistakes she can discuss with her highly-paid therapist some day.

We've also (pretty much) finalized our first-name list. We both do this thing where we run hot and cold on certain names - one of us will love love LOVE something for weeks or months, put it at the top of our personal list and think it's perfect...and then one day, wake up not liking it much anymore. "Oh," he or I will say. "I'm over that one now." Then we move on to something else, and probably will come back to loving this name later. We're apparently both quite fickle, but have forced ourselves to freeze our choices where they're at because we are out of time to play I Love It, No Wait, I Hate It. From a field of sixty-plus potential names, we've narrowed it down to a dozen or so. I'm sure there were a few things we left out, or some we haven't thought of, but the current incarnation of the list is a good length, with not too many weird or boring choices, so we're quitting while we're ahead.

My husband said using "Reid" as a middle name may head off any "potential bitching" from his family about the last name thing, since it was a family name when they gave it to him as his middle and there's been one in every generation or something like that. This, as you can imagine, raised my hackles a bit, as per usual.

"What, you think they're going to bitch about the fact that my name's in there, too? I carried the baby around all these months and got it out into the world and I don't even fucking deserve to have my last name included?!"
He sighed. "No, I'm not saying I think they will, but in case they do..."
"They'd better fucking not, you hear me? Because I will go apeshit, I think. I will tell anyone who whines to go suck it. Our last names are getting equal footing, so if anyone bitches about that they REALLY ARE saying my name doesn't matter."
"That's true. I don't think my parents are going to step up and say that."
"Anyone who does will have to deal with me, because it happens to be our business and none of anyone else's and I'm sick of trying to tiptoe around everyone's issues." I smacked my hand down on the table. "And that is fucking THAT."