Carter's Story

When I found out I was pregnant with Carter, I was sure he was a girl which was fabulous because the only name Marc and I had agreed on to that point was a girl's name. On the day of the ultrasound we were so excited to have the doctor confirm what I already felt so strongly--we were having a girl. The doctor didn't say that though. The ultrasound results were quite conclusive--our baby was a definitely a boy and I had not an ounce of Mother's Intuition. So, I spent the next few days playing with two ideas--we were either in fact having a boy, or the baby's legs were bent in just the right position so that the boy part was actually his leg tucked underneath itself so the doctor thought we were having a boy, but we were really having a girl. The latter idea was just silly now that I look back and once Marc convinced me that it was a boy, the name struggle began. We would throw names around all the time. I even had my students at AF Junior High write their favorite boy name down and I sorted through them for ideas. Pretty soon we had a list of five names: Maxwell, Parker, Porter, Carter and Nathan. I'm pretty sure that was the order of favorite to least, too. Once we came up with the list, new names weren't discussed very often. Marc really like Maxwell and Porter--I wasn't a huge fan by the time May rolled around. Parker and Carter were my favs--my great friend Whitni's last name was Parker, so that would honor her, and Carter, well that was because I was a Trading Spaces fanatic that year and this super handsome carpenter on the show's name was Carter. Marc insisted we weren't naming our son after one of my TV crushes. We still hadn't come up with a final decision before Carter was born, so on our way to the hospital we decided it was between Maxwell, Parker, or Carter (Marc must have been pretty sure the first two would beat out the third!!) Well, once I gave birth, we were just thrilled to be holding our new baby. The doctor had to remind us that we hadn't named him yet. (It wasn't too long after the birth, but the doctor hadn't left the room yet.) We looked at his face and his dark hair and ran through the list of names. He wasn't a Maxwell. He wasn't a Parker. Carter fit him perfectly. So there, Marc! He got his name from a cute carpenter on TV!