Chrysanthemum

The other night my friend Kelly had a copy of the book Chrysanthemum she bought to give her niece as a birthday present. This was one children's book that I had never read and it looked interesting, so I read through it. It scared the crap out of me!

The story is about a little mouse who is so special that her parents have to come up with a very special name for her. They decide to name her Chrysanthemum. All growing up, she love the name. She loved to read it and to write it, and to say it. The trouble starts, however, when she starts school. The other little mice make fun of her and her name. They say it's too long (it has as many letters as half of the alphabet), and is a flower (they pretend to pick and smell her and tell her she must be out of the dirt). Chrysanthemum then begins to feel that her name isn't special at all and is quite sad. Luckily a special teacher comes along, named Delphinium, and helps her feel special again.

I found the message of this sweet little book, quite frightening. Names are important. What we name our little girl will be with her all of her life! Someone said to me not long ago that it must be a really special name if we are keeping it secret. Honestly, while we really love it and it is special to us, it's not anything super secret worthy. We didn't keep it a secret to wow everyone with it. We just didn't want people to ruin it for us by telling us what was wrong with it.

Interestingly, it has become quite a hot button issue among our friends. They keep trying to trick us or convince us to tell. The keep trying to guess. Many have their favorite "pretend" names. We let slip that one person had guessed correctly but that they didn't know they had guessed correctly which only added to the mystery. Now I'm afraid that people will be disappointed and wonder what all the hype was about when she actually is named.

P.S. In reality, we haven't even completely decided on a middle name. There are two we love, and Josh and I are somewhat divided. One of them I like with the first name, but one I like better with another first name and sort of want to "save" it for that name if we have another girl. Josh argues that there is no guarantee we will have another girl and shouldn't save it. We have reached something of a stalemate which may not be broken until we see her!

P.P.S. Feel free to post your guesses...I find them amusing!