Name spelling

I was cursed with a first name that people constantly misspell - Shawn. That's why I sign my posts as ShawnNotSean. As someone who grew up having to correct people on how my name was spelled, I have always gone out of my way to make sure that I spell other people's name correctly. I also made sure to give my children names that don't really have common spelling variations. But back to Shawn - the spelling of my name was actually the most popular spelling variation in the US back in the 70s when my parents (probably mostly my mom) came up with the name, not the more traditional Sean. Maybe back in the 70s people were trying to spell phonetically, I don't know. Now to top it off, sometimes people even think I'm female based on the spelling of my name if they have never met me. Talk about identity crisis! It seems that at some point, people started naming their daughters Shawna, and some have even dropping the a altogether for their daughter. I don't know if this is really PC, but I really don't like having a name that is now unisex. So the next time you need to spell someone's name or make an assumption about the gender of someone based on their name, think twice.

Children & Life

I have a son who is 7 months old and a daughter who is almost 3. My wife and I knew that our lives would change forever, but I don't think you can ever really be prepared for how much children will change your life. We thought having our daughter Lily* changed our life - never getting enough sleep and never having enough time for ourselves anymore, but then came the boy, Linus*. We quickly discovered that having 2 children versus 1 child quadruples the amount of work and has an inverse relationship on parental sleep.

Lily started sleeping through the night pretty early on, but Linus has been a challenge to say the least. First we discovered that Linus had what used to be called colic, but today in most cases is now diagnosed as acid reflux, so now he takes a liquid acid reflux medicine that seems to be keeping him from throwing up so much and other stuff associated with acid reflux in young children. Then Linus kept getting cold after cold and was miserable. We are finally now settling into a fairly predictable pattern, Linus goes to bed between 7 and 8pm, then he wakes up around 6am. If he could just make it to 7 am we would be thrilled! We have tried moving his bedtime to later in hopes of getting him to sleep in, but it didn't work. Our next hope is that when daylight savings time returns he might sleep in a little more....

*Names changed to protect the innocent (well, in most cases innocent!)