After “when is it due?”, and “do you know what gender it is?”, the most commonly asked question is definitely “do you have a name picked out yet?”  We’ve been talking about names since before Olyvia was pregnant, but we’re still stuck on a name.

Somewhat ironically, we had a girl’s name picked out that we both really liked, and was decided on very early (Juliana Emma Meyer).  The two closest boy’s names so far have been Joshua Alexander Meyer and Samuel Alexander Meyer.  Samuel (Sammy when he is little) is probably in the lead at the moment, but we’re certainly not decided (it doesn’t help that Olyvia’s mum’s dog is called Sam).

We like the idea of a name that can be shortened, so that he has plenty of options later on (Juliana, Julie, Juls, Jul, Jem, Ana; Joshua, Josh, Joshy; Samuel, Sammy, Sam).  We’re avoiding a family connection to the name (partly because you can’t name the baby after everyone, and still only have three (hyphen-less) names) – Emma was after one of Olyvia’s friends, but that’s the only connection to someone we know.

There’s the “you can’t name the baby until it’s born” meme, which Olyvia somewhat subscribes to, but I don’t really.  Until then, suggestions are welcome!  (Olyvia also doesn’t like using the name of anyone she has met that she doesn’t like, even if she hasn’t seen that person since primary school, which makes things slightly more difficult!).

As an aside: I still really like the Baby Name Wizard (NameVoyager), which shows you how popular names have been in the last hundred years (in the US, I’m guessing) in a neat little Java application.  It would be nice to choose a name that’s not really obscure, but isn’t really common, either.  (It’s fun to put in names of celebrities and watch the popularity of the names rise and fall with the celebrity’s fame).

technorati tags:baby, name

We put the (via TradeMe) cot up today, with minimal conflict, and only had to redo it three times before it was right. We think.

It looks nice and we’re very happy with it. It has a few little teething marks, but that just gives it character, really.

Here are some early photos of the room (we’ll redo them when we get the bookshelf, which is the last part, and tidy things up a bit) and pregnant me and the cute dog.

Not much more to say now, really. Only 7 weeks to go! (More or less – if you haven’t entered the guess the birth date and birth weight competitions, let us know!)

[For reference: the original due date was 16/8, and the official due date is 25/8]

Scan #4 (the SCOPE one) was pretty short, and mostly measurements, which aren’t that interesting to look at, so there isn’t a video for that. However, we did a “vanity scan”, getting the “4d” (a marketing term where I presume the 4th “d” is time) version. Unfortunately, their equipment is unnecessarily limited, so the VCD that we get is in black and white, even though the VHS tape is in colour (as are the photographs). A couple of the photographs make it into the scan [3.5MB H.264] (higher quality [36.5MB H.264]).

This should really have been the second scan, but the first one was too early. Once again, everything was thankfully all good. The baby is a bit larger than expected, so we’re pretty sure that it’ll be 16/08/06 and not the revised 25/08/06. I’ve learnt a bit more about editing the scan [3MB H.264] (higher quality [23MB H.264]) by now, too.

Note that you need Quicktime 7 (included in recent versions of iTunes) to play H.264.

Scan #1 was too early to do the required measurements (and they bumped the date to 25/8/06 from 16/8/06), so we needed a second scan [3.5MB MOV] (higher quality [17.5MB MOV]).

Here’s our first baby scan [4.6MB WMV] (high quality version [15MB WMV]), where it was too early to do the required measurements.