I'm In The Pocket Just Like Grady Tate

If Grady turned out to be a lady baby, we would have named her Mabel. Shawn was pushing for Penelope but I would have won the lady baby name battle (we almost named Stella Penny and that would be weird in my head.)

Shawn and I had a lot of difficulty picking Grady's name. We started off at completely different ends of the baby boy names spectrum. When forced to define our naming styles, Shawn's choices fell into the "future rockstar" category while mine were more "fancy little gentleman, preferably with a British accent." Veto power was not used sparingly is what I'm saying.

We could not find a middle ground. Shawn continued to come up with rocker names (Axel, Maverick, etc) and I continued to love my little gentleman names (Finnian, Milo, etc.) It wasn't just our naming styles holding us back, though. We also had a few naming clauses that tripped us up.  

Clause #1: name must not be 1-syllable because of longstanding family tradition-mandated middle name of Shawn (tradition is that firstborn son is given his father's first name as his middle name. So ... sorry future hypothetical partner of Grady who has to work with Grady as a middle name for their hypothetical firstborn son.)  

Clause #2: name must not end in "an" or "en" sound because the last syllable of Shawn and Grady's 2-syllable last name is "an" and is way too rhymey with names like Brendan or Aiden. 

Clause #3: name must be Irish or at least feel Irish. (Shawn's clause.) 

Clause #4: name must not be too Irish because of Shawn and Grady's extremely Irish last name. (My clause.)

Clause #5: name must not be Willie or anything else that sounds like, or can be rhymed with, any slang word for penis (Shawn's BULLSHIT clause.) (Willie is a rad name and I would have loved to name Grady Willie but whatever, I've never been a boy on a school playground so FINE, SHAWN, I respected this clause.) 

I halfheartedly suggested Grady about halfway through the pregnancy. I honestly wasn't that into it but Shawn loved it. I didn't hate it, it just didn't feel like it was the name. I was waiting for an aha! moment I think (which is silly because I've never really been an aha! person.) We continued to fall in love with completely different names (him: Maximus and Ewan, me: Leo and Bennett.) Shawn kept coming back to Grady, though.

Roughly eight weeks before Grady was born, I saw Grady suggested to a reader on Swistle's baby name blog. Seeing it in a different context, with the other names Swistle suggested alongside it, made me see the name Grady in a new light.  I decided to get serious about Grady. I needed to either love it or veto it but I couldn't keep maybeing it. I already knew about Big Sugar's Grady (Shawn's a fan, I'm eh) but in my Grady research, I discovered Grady Martin. As a session musician, he played guitar on many of Willie Nelson's albums and later toured with Willie's band. Not only that, he helped shape Willie's song On the Road Again.

On the Road Again is a song that will forever remind me of my dad. When I was a kid, we used to go camping every summer. We'd pack up the station wagon until it was busting at the seams, all six of us would pile in, and we'd set off for 5 hours of cramped, sweaty driving until we reached the campsite. Dad would always put the Willie Nelson cassette into the tape player and blast On the Road Again and sing along and car dance while pulling out of the driveway.

Finding out about Grady Martin was sort of my aha! moment. Grady isn't named after Grady Martin or Big Sugar's Grady (or Grady Tate, for that matter) but it's our way of finding meaning in his name. I'm nostalgic about Grady Martin's connection to Willie Nelson and Shawn is pleased with the connection to talented musicians.

After our maternity photos were done, I didn't let myself think about names again.