How Redford Became Dane

Happy Mother's Day yesterday to my mom, my mom-in-law, my grandmas, my sisters, my cousins, and my friends. I am twice-blessed this Mother's Day with two of the cutest boys ever. One who is wild and rambunctious and the other who is mellow and sweet, but I wouldn't trade either of them for all the tea in China.

Some of you have been asking how we got from a name like Redford to the name Dane. Here is the story, as I remember it (Chris might have a different point of view, but he can post a rebuttal if I get too far off the mark).

Friday April 29, 2011; 3am
My amazing nurse Jessica brings the baby in for a feeding. He's just gotten a bath and he's all clean, pink, and perfect. I'm just waking up and as I look at him I almost start to cry. He looks to me just like his Daddy's baby pictures. The name Chris had shown the most partiality to was Redford, a name I thought sounded like a furniture company. But he looked so much like Chris that I wanted to give him Chris's favorite name.

"His name's Redford." I told Jessica. "Will you make up a little sign for him?"

I was so excited to tell Chris that he "won" and the baby would have his name. When he got there the next morning I showed him the name tag on the baby's hospital bed. I then proceeded to call or text every person I knew to tell them the baby's name was going to be Redford Neal Davis and his nickname would be Little Red.

Chris wasn't as excited as I wanted him to be. He kept staring at the baby and saying the name over and over again. "Red! Redford!" Finally, at 7pm he told me that it wasn't the baby's name. Well at this point we'd gone through over a dozen names and I was spent.

"Fine. I'm tired of coming up with names. YOU name him." I said to Chris.

The next morning he came in with several names. I refused to get attached to any of them until he had picked the one he was serious about. Dane was the winner as the day went on, but I still didn't want to get my hopes up that we had ACTUALLY named this guy. Saturday night, as I was about to be discharged, I had to fill out the paperwork for Dane's birth certificate, etc. It was about 10 or 10:30pm and I called Chris.

"Dane is his name? Are you SURE?"

He said he was. So I put ink to paper and there was no backing out of it! So there you have it. That's how Redford became Dane. Although I still plan on calling him Little Red.


P.S. Here are some pictures of Dane and Dutch at my mom's blog and my cousin Sara's blog.