Cuteness, thy name is Ada. Weblog-depriving timesink, thy name is Ada, too.
So there were two reasons we decided to wait until she was born before deciding on a name for our first child: First, to make sure she was a she. [That took about 2 seconds.] Then, to see what name seemed to fit best. This took a little longer.
Monday morning, and for the better part of the day, the kid looked like someone your zeidy chatted with every week at the shvitz up on 10th Street. Unless we were willing to raise a daughter named Henry, patience was in order.
After about 36 hours of life, it turns out this little red squished creature was possessed of rather unusual beauty and intelligence. So we pulled out our favorites: Ada and Catherine. Catherine's a no-brainer, but Ada required further analysis. [Before the three accepted pronunciations of Ada (AY-da, ADD-a, AHH-da) turn into the Bay-singer/Bass-inger of the 21st century, please note that she prefers AY-da.]
Jean's great-grandmother, Ada Philena Canfield, was our original source for the name. But we evaluated other Ada's in our search for dealbreakers. What's a dealbreaker, you ask? Well, India was on our list, until I happened to Google "India Allen" one evening. [Warning: NOT SAFE FOR WORK.]
Non-dealbreaker Ada's, in the order we encountered them:
Final result we used them both. From here on out, please direct all complaints about the paucity of posts to Ms. Ada Catherine Cottam Allen.
