Nicknames and Mascots

I alluded to, in the twins' birthday post, that all 3 of my kids had their own mascots and that one day I would write the stories of how we came up with those. 2 of them are amusing. 1 is just basic and simple.

Let's start with that one -- Daniel. Daniel's mascot is a lion, mainly because of the bible story of Daniel and the Lion's Den. This was pre-set for him before he was even born. No imagination. Nothing that would lead us to come up with it for a mascot. Just plain, basic, and the way it is. And he has embraced his mascot. He loves to think of himself as the lion. He loves his lion Pillow Pet. And he is satisfied.

The twins each have a story behind their animals.

Let's start with Rachel. The twins were born 6 weeks early and consequently spent 11 days in the NICU. I didn't get to touch them until the next day. The afternoon on Saturday, January 13 (when they were just shy of 1 day old), I was holding Rachel and enjoying the moment. Rachel, however, was NOT enjoying the moment. She was crying. Screaming. Showing the world her personality, even at such a young age. Kevin came in and was looking around trying to figure out who let in the "Alley Cat". When I pointed out to him that he was referring to HIS DAUGHTER, he looked at her and ever since then has called her "Kitty" or "Kitty-Kat" when wanting to use a nickname for her. So, from that point forward, her mascot was a kitty-cat.

Simon didn't do anything to give himself a mascot, but his parents did. When we were trying to decide on a name for him, we didn't know what to choose. We knew we wanted to name him after my grandfather who had passed away just before I learned I was pregnant with them and his name was Samuel. But Kevin had a nephew named Samuel already -- the name was taken and that was no longer an option. But we had already established a precedent of using the first letter of the name (Daniel was named for Kevin's grandfather, Dale). So we considered "S" names and found Simon and agreed on that pretty quickly. But we still had to come up with a middle name. After a while, we still couldn't agree on one, so we went back to my grandfather's name. His middle name was a "J" name, so we started thinking of this and decided to use the same middle name as my grandfather. So, Simon's name would be "Simon James". Unfortunately, I remembered incorrectly. My grandfather's middle name was not James, but Joseph (my NEPHEW'S middle name is James [the Samuel I mentioned]). So why did the name "Simon James" seem so natural to both of us? We figured that out when Simon was about a month old. We were listening to a Sandra Boynton album (Philadelphia Chickens) and, in the song "15 Animals", as the last line was sung ("....and my turtle, Simon James Alexander Ragsdale the Third") Kevin and I stared at each other. WE HAD NAMED OUR SON AFTER A TURTLE!!!!!! So, Simon's mascot became a turtle, and we renamed his teddy bear "Alexander Ragsdale". I suppose, given we live in Maryland, having a mascot of a turtle is a good thing -- UMaryland's mascot is the Terrapin.....