What's in a name?

Obviously I entered the blogging world a little late.  Finding a name for my blog was just about impossible!  All of my ideas that I really liked were already taken and I'm probably not the most creative person in the world.  I could have spent more time thinking about it, but I was anxious to get started.  But I think that Home Growing Happiness is pretty descriptive of my life and I'm happy with it.  It's really starting to grow on me!   :o)

When I was thinking about this last night, I was re-agonizing over little bear's name.  Yes, I'll admit - I have naming regrets.  Honestly, I think that naming your baby is one of the hardest jobs a parent has.  It has to be a name that your child can live with for their entire life, so it needs to be a good, solid, non-embarrassing, and appropriate to the personality (that you don't even know yet) of  your child name.

Honestly, I do love little bear's name.  I think that it is a very good, solid, non-embarrassing name and I think that it does fine with his personality.  It's also not too trendy or overly popular.  Unfortunately his first name is a unisex name.  Papa bear and I were perfectly fine with this - what we didn't realize (well we did realize, but not until we were set on the name, a couple of weeks before he was born) was that it is one of the most popular growing girls names....  Still I love it and now that he is getting older, we get fewer mistakes about gender.  It's his middle name that I regret.  Now let me clarify - I love his middle name, how it flows, and all of that.  But I wish that we had gone with a family name (specifically his great grandfather's middle name).  It's actually pretty similar to little bear's middle name and this is one of the reasons that we chose it.    The reason that we didn't go with great grandpa's name was because we had already used it - for the dog!  Guard.  I think that is the best dog name - He is my Guard Dog.  hehe  But then we had little bear and it just felt wrong to give my son the same name as the dog (even if it was his middle name and it was for sentimental reasons).  Now we (well me, but I think Papa bear would agree) wish that we had gifted little bear with the name Guard.  At least we will always have this story for him and who knows - if we should ever have another little boy, I think that we have learned our lesson!

So, please tell me that I am not the only one with name regrets!