This might seem like it’s coming out of the blue but we’re changing Kevin’s name to Calvin. We’ve been thinking about this since almost the day he was born.
When we were picking a name during pregnancy for the life of us we couldn’t decide on a name for a boy that we liked. Ramone was our favorite, but we were reluctant to use what traditionally is a Hispanic name as his first name. Additionally, we (mostly Emily) were concerned about trying to incorporate a family name. We thought about using the name Don(ald) but President 45, who we weren’t particular fans of, ruined that idea for us. We wanted a name that would go with Ramone and since we are fans of my dad we went with ‘Kevin Ramone’ which has a nice ring to it.
Looking back now there are a few problems with the name Kevin. One is that it’s just a tad too common, and we know way too many people/celebrities/TV characters with the name. Part of the issue is we can’t escape certain connotations in our head depending on whether we’re talking about Emily’s favorite TV show The Office or This Is Us, neither of which we’re particularly thrilled with. In the past couple of years, we’ve decided that we don’t actually like the idea of naming him after somebody close to us because we want to afford him as much freedom as possible to forge his own path in life.
Aside from having a common and somewhat uninteresting name, introducing him to new people is often accompanied by a sinking feeling that we chose the wrong one for him. The biggest issue we have with the name Kevin is also the most intangible one - after getting to know him he just doesn’t seem like a ‘Kevin’. Calvin seems to fit him so much better, and it’s similar enough to Kevin that we can a) hopefully not confuse him too much b) keep the name Ramone because Calvin Ramone works as well as Kevin Ramone.
We’ve been agonizing over this for a long time. We’ve experimented for a while calling him Calvin in private and introducing him to people as such, it always feels so much better to us. It just ‘fits’ him, (whatever that even means) and quite frankly it’s a relief to be able to use the name that feels right.
For a couple years we figured we would call him Kev instead of Kevin and not legally change his name. We found that most people seemed to assume that Kev was our affectionate nickname for him and that the proper way to address him is “Kevin”. Even when directly stating that’s what we prefer, he was still “Kevin” to most people. We found every time someone calls him Kevin we cringe, and we don’t relish the idea of having to correct people. In the end, we’ve decided to legally change his name to Calvin but still keep the nickname “Kev”, partially because it’s habit but we also like the nickname it’s our way to keep the reference to Kevin alive. I want to be as clear as I can be that this doesn’t have anything to do with my dad, it’s just a name that doesn’t ‘feel’ right. There’s a chance we’ll eventually end up calling him Ramone anyway, but that will be up to him to decide.
Calvin has made some good progress with speech and continues to attend weekly speech therapy sessions. It seems every other day we’re hearing him say a new word. His favorite word right now is ’no’. He’s in the toddler phase where his brain is hard at work categorizing the world and deviation from normal routine results in emphatic no’s until the error has been corrected. This is anything from using green plates instead of blue to who plays with him at certain times of the day (the weekends mess with his head).
A few samplings of words he’s fond of:
“caw”: ’talk’. He loves to hear us expound on a topic. Sometimes he has a specific thing in mind such as telling him the story of when he grabbed a prickly pear and the trauma that ensue; he’s heard the story many many times and he continues to request it. He also likes to hear how the digestive system works, how precipitation and clouds work, or what our schedules are like. We try to not get too annoyed because sometimes it can get exhausting.
“awbee”: excavator. This is by far his favorite toy. He loves digging in a pile of beans, dirt, woodchips, or pretty much anything that can be scooped.
“pu-pee”: puppy, which is the stuffed animal he carries with him everywhere he goes, although we do have general a rule that he can’t take him outside the house except when we go on extended trips.
“yaesh”: yes. We still have to often guess from his grunts and cries of “oh!!” what he wants, until we hear the sweet sound of yaesh.
“diff”: different. He often uses this because he doesn’t like the food option, or he’s bored with the particular truck show he’s watching.
“mom-ee, dad-ee”: we went over 2 years of him not being able to address us so it’s very cool to hear him call us mommy and daddy.
“go! go! go!”: I’m bored of sitting at this stoplight.
He knows many colors such as “why, bla, beeew, oh-oh, eh-oh” (white, black, blue, orange, yellow)
We’ve lived in Rexburg for 4 years from the time we moved from Phoenix. This is way too long and we are frankly tired of living here which is almost entirely because of the weather. It’s exhausting to have to wait until May for it to get into the 60’s and 70’s, and with a child cabin fever is always lurking around the corner. At this point, we’re willing to pay whatever insanely inflated prices we need to pay to live somewhere else.
January:
February:
March:
April:
It’s now May and the weather forecast for the near future is 50’s and 60’s with biting cold wind and some light snow dusting every now and then just for the sake of kicking us in the ribs while we’re down. In case I haven’t made it clear, we are tired of this hellscape.
In happier news, Kev got to eat a popsicle.
And he got to spend some time with his cousins, participating in what I assume is every toddler’s favorite activity: throwing rocks into creeks.
Making homemade pizza is pretty fun too.
Cloud gazing adds a nice touch.
We always have Kev put away his trucks before bedtime. Lately, he’s been particular about how this is done. He’s very insistent that they need to be delicately stacked up in one giant pile in one container, instead of spread out into the two boxes we keep for truck storage.
He’s been experimenting with how things look different when overlaid with a particular color.
We got nervous about the prospect of him losing his puppy which is his favorite thing in the world and so we decided to pick up a few backups from Wal-Mart just in case (they’re rather cheap). Kev found them and we were able to snap a picture of him loving all the animals.
We did one of the several fun outdoor things you can do in the winter in this part of the world, an ice castle. Kev wanted to know where the trucks were.
His bedtime routine involves going through his list of music videos that he really likes (apparently he’s a big fan of Blink-182).
We went to an aquarium in Idaho falls which was way better than I thought it would be. Now when we mention fish, Kev points up to the sky as if to show where fish are. I think this is why.
And a smattering of pictures of the boy playing with trucks, which we have a lot of.
