I am a lousy blogger. I’ll be better soon.

I haven’t always been a lousy blogger.  Life has, however, taken a bit of a turn this year.  I am having a hard time focusing on one thing for any amount of time, including work.  So blogging has been on the backburner, unfortunately along with the genealogy in general.

My husband and I are expecting our first child at the very beginning of March.  ACK!  There’s so much to do and so much to think about that I feel like I’m about to go into shutdown mode. I was just trying to put a registry together and I realized that i have NO idea what babies need.  Blankets?  Diapers?  Uhhh….Stuff?  That’s about where I am.  So…that’s just one more thing pressing on my brain.  What in the world do I think I am doing?

I am, however, excited to be extending our family tree.  One thing we have not yet discussed is names.  It is also the one question (after, “Do you know what you’re having?”) that everyone has asked.  The goal was to put together a list of 10 names each, then cross reference, and then start vetoing.  Andrew seems to be having a harder time coming up with names, so we haven’t gotten to view each other’s lists.  I would love to add a family name in there, which I believe is something that has often fallen by the wayside in recent past generations (unless you are a Jr. or something along those lines).

We have had some generational naming in my family though.  A cousin of mine named her son Andrew Lloyd.  Lloyd was our grandfather’s name.  He was an absolute delight of a person, and a great guy to be named after.  My husband has a brother who has the middle name of Wood, which is the family name carried down by the first male for 4 generations.  Before that it was the surname of one of his branches that settled Indianapolis.  What I have gained from my research so far is that the Wood who first came to Indianapolis settled along the White River and was a cooper.  So I kind of love that the name has trickled down to our generation.

As you start looking back into families of the 18th and 19th centuries, many names are clearly taken from older generations.  They may be named after an aunt, uncle, grandparent, or even a child who just died and had the same name (creepers).

So what names do we have that would work?  Well…once we come up with something I’ll reveal it to the world.  Oh…and it’s a girl.