The Story Behind Rylan's Name

Rylan Jack

When we found out that our third baby was another boy, we gave up on ever having a girl named Micah and decided it was time to name a boy after Michael. I was driving from Silver Spring to Philly one day and kept passing signs for a building company called Ryland Homes. Michael's middle name is Ryan, and I thought, "Ryland would make a very cute name." We dropped the "d" at the end to make it more like Ryan.

I totally thought I was making up a name, but in the past three years, I've met three other boys named Rylan. Other things I regret about Rylan's name: people always assume there's a "d" at the end, and Southerners always think I'm saying Rylynn, as in a girl's name. The pink boots don't help.

His middle name is after my Grandpa Alley who died the year he was born. We decided to go with a more common middle name in case he grows up and decides he hates his weird first name.

The Story Behind Eli's Name

Elijah Hawking

My philosophy of baby-naming is that I get to pick the baby's first name because I had to go through nine months of suckiness to bring him into the world. Michael got veto power and the middle name.

When I was pregnant with Cole, I had a co-worker named Elijah for like a month. I had never met an Elijah before and really liked the name, so even before Cole was born, I announced to Michael that our next child would be named Elijah and we would call him Eli. Little did I know how popular that name would become over the intervening years.

When Michael and I met, he was really into Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time. I liked the name for the possible future athletic nickname The Hawk.

The Story Behind Cole's Name

Nicolus Talmage

When Michael and I were engaged, he mentioned one day that he wouldn't mind having a son named after him like his brother is named after his dad. I said, "Nuh-uh. Not happening. I am 100 percent vetoing the confusion of having two Michaels in one house." But then I proposed jokingly that we should name a daughter after him (Micah) and a son after me (Nicolus because my middle name is Nicole and I went by Nikki when I was little).

For some reason, that conversation stuck, and by the time I delivered our first little bundle of joy, we'd been planning to call our first baby Nicolus (or Micah) for two years. The weird spelling was our stupid attempt to make it look more like Nicole, and we went with the nickname Cole because we don't like the name Nick (or that might just be me).

When Cole started kindergarten, he decided he wanted to go by Nicolus at school. I wasn't surprised; I changed my own name from Nikki to Erin when I was seven. Like mother like son. I'm waiting expectantly for the day when he comes home and announces he wants to be called Nick.

His middle name is after the LDS apostle and historian James E. Talmage, whom Michael greatly admires.

I think this should be a meme! I want to hear how you chose your baby's names! Blog on your blogs or just comment here.

Additions to the English Language

Back when Cole was little he would always calls his pajamas "jamamas". So that became an actual word in our house and that's what both Eli and Rylan learned to call them. It got so bad that whenever we tried to actually call them "pajamas" they would look at us funny. So we still call them "jamamas" to this day.

Rylan gets better every day at English, but his pronunciation skills are still quite lacking. Today Rylan wanted some more ketchup on his hash browns and I told him he had enough already. His response was "n'uh, that's only a hootabit". This made me look at him with my eye brow cocked. I then turned to Erin and she informed me that this was how he said "little bit".

Hootabit is such a cool word that we've decided to add it to our Peters family lexicon. Please join us in spreading these 2 new additions to the English language. In fact, even if the conversation has nothing to do with pajamas, please inject the words "jamamas" or "hootabit" into the conversation just so you can tell people what it means. It's a noble cause and I'm sure future generations of English speakers will thank you.

Cole Says...

"I only like movies with real things like aliens, not animals."

(Cole swears I misheard him and that he said he only likes movies with people and aliens. Whatever, kiddo. I know what I heard!)

Roller Derby We Are Not

Over a year ago, I convinced Michael that we should pool all of our Christmas money and buy a really nice camera. This is how I know Michael loves me - he let me buy the camera although he obviously has no interest in learning how to use it. There are 20 pictures like this one on my camera, all taken by Michael:


Even lightening it doesn't help much:


But back to the subject I meant to write about...The boy's school had a discount day at an area skating rink. Michael and I both stink at roller skating, but I volunteered as the parent to take the boys out on the rink while Michael hung with Rylan.


Cole and Eli did not take easily to roller skating, and the night would have been a disaster if another helpful parent hadn't given me the tip that if you take your kids' skates back to the skate rental spot, they'll tighten the wheels. After that, the boys were basically walking around the rink rather than skating, but at least they were happier.

Despite a lot of grumbling from one member of this family, I had fun watching my kids fall down rollerskating, but the part where I laughed the hardest was when I tried doing the chicken dance while holding Rylan, and of course this is how we ended up:

This is a horrendous picture of me. That's how funny I thought it was to fall down.

Our three "roller skaters:"

Resident Artiste

All three of my boys are excellent artists for their age (in this momma's humble opinion), but as I've written before, Eli is our resident artiste. He loves it so much that he's cried on more than one occasion when bedtime rolled around and he realized he hadn't gotten to draw that day.

As his kindergarten teacher told us at our parent/teacher conference, there are other kids that are better technically, but there's something so creative and detailed about Eli's drawings...

These are some new Pokemon characters that he made up.

Lamanites

The next three are parts of one large picture. Yes means good guy, No means bad guy. Eli informs me that it's not finished yet.

Rylan Says

Cole: What does d a d spell?

Rylan: Daddy

Cole: What does m o m m a spell?

Rylan: Erin

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