Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Congratulations, it's a....

This is my first time doing a link-up!!!  Through the encouragement of my friend Michele over at Dodging Acorns dodgingacorns.wordpress.com from a blog that she follows allofmenow.com about life before we became Mom's.  I will post my entries over at allofmenow.com and here at thelittlethings-unknown.blogspot.com .  I am looking forward to gaining more followers and spreading some joy to others through my other posts. 

Hard to believe there is now a whole generation of women having babies that do not have to wait until the delivery day to find out if they will need pink or blue booties for their little one. As we know it always hasn't been that way, in the history if medicine ultrasounds to reveal a baby's gender is relatively a new thing. When my mother was pregnant with me and heading past her due date she had X-Rays to see how big I was, but not to reveal my gender.

I do not remember my mother ever saying if she had a feeling of whether I was a boy or a girl, all I know is that she said she had always liked the name Christopher, she never thought of a girls name so when I arrived my parents were clueless.  Now when I was born mothers and babies stayed in the hospital considerably longer than the 48 hours required today, so they had some time to think about a name.  Finally they decided on Michele Anne, Michele after someone my mother knew in high school that passed away and Anne just like all my father sisters and because his middle name is Allen.  Now here is the funny part, my parents had no idea how to spell Michele, hence the 1 "L" unlike the way most people spell it with 2 "L's".  I remember growing up my mother would always say "Michele with one L and Anne with an E".

I always thought my name was rather boring, unlike other names I thought were more exciting....Elizabeth, Rebbecca, Zoe (my daughters name) those at least had cute nicknames.  Growing up I was always called Mich, Chele, Meesh, it drove me crazy.  The only people that I didn't mind calling me a nickname were my grandparents, because I know from them it was special.  I can still hear them saying all my nicknames in my mind even though they have been gone for a combined 4 years.  I also remember when I liked my name because my initials spelt a word MAP, just like my father and I thought that was pretty cool!!!  When I was getting married I originally was going to change my last name, but then realized that I had no brothers, or male cousins, my sister was already married and changed her name, so I was the carrier in a way of our last name.  Now I know that I will not be able to make the name go on forever as my children have Mr.O's last name but my name is mine, it was mine long before I was Mrs. O or C's wife, long before I was H or Z's mother.  My name is something I do not mind as much now that I am 36, in the teaching world I am known as Michele Patnaude, many people know me as only that.  So as the saying goes, "that's my story and I'm sticking with it"

1 comment:

  1. teehee! So many things we have in common my dear ;-)

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