what's in a name?!

Okay, so this may be a bit of a touchy subject and I know some may not agree with our decision, but after much thought and discussion, Sean and I have decided to change Anthony's name. When we finalize the adoption, we are able to keep his name or pick a new name for him...we will be changing it. At first, we knew we weren't going to. We didn't even consider it. However, over the course of the last month, some things have happened that kept bringing us back to that option. Let me explain...

Anthony James is a junior. He was named after his mother's boyfriend at the time he was born. It was never thought that this boyfriend was Anthony's father, however, she named him after this boyfriend who wasn't a boyfriend of hers for very long. We knew this in the beginning and still never thought to change his name.

We have had lots of people say, "OH, Tate and Tony, so cute!" Well, we don't really want him to be called Tony (no offense to anyone named Tony!), he doesn't look like a Tony, we wouldn't really want that name for him. Also, some people have said, "well he'll probably be called AJ someday." Ummm, ya, we don't like that either. We don't mind the name Anthony, but we know that there was a possibility a nickname would catch on that we didn't like. Still, we weren't going to change his name.

You see, we just kept saying, "he recognizes his name, he answers to it...we're not going to change it. If he were a baby and didn't know his name yet, we would consider changing it, but that's not the case here." Then, one day I noticed that he looked at me when I accidentally called him Tate. He looked at me like, "what mom." I noticed it for some reason and thought, "hmmmm, I wonder if he really does recognize his name". I tested my theory that he might not by calling him other random names throught the day..."George", "Mike", "Joshua", "Bode", "Brigg", "Tyler". He answered to all of them in the same way. Okay, so maybe he didn't recognize his name. He was responding to my tone of voice when saying any name.

It got me to thinking. His prvious foster family never called him Anthony. I am not even going to go into the "why" of this, but they called him Twauny. Don't ask. Long story. They had other little nicknames for him over the course of the 8 months they had him, but one thing remained consistent...they never called him Anthony. No wonder he didn't recognize his name!!! Aside from the fact that he is several months delayed, there is no reason why he would really know his name because he'd only been called that name for the first 8 weeks of his life. Still, we didn't plan to change his name, but now it did enter our minds and we started discussing it as a slight possibility yet never thinking we'd actually do it.

Finally, he had his last visit with his mom last week. She made it clear to the worker that she wanted us to know that she would like us to change his name if we'd like to. She said that she was pressured to name him after her boyfriend and pretty much wished she hadn't done that because now she connects his name to something negative. Well, that was all it took for his to have a serious discussion about changing it.

We decided that one day, he may ask where he got his name from (Tate did just a few weeks ago) and we don't really think that we will want to have him connect his name to something negative. One day, when he's older if he understands the specifics a bit more, he'll know the whole story, but we want to tell him that we picked the name for him because we love it and it fit him.

So we are changing his name. It cannot "officially" be changed until we go through court (hopefully late June or early July is when we'll finalize) and have it changed then. However, we have started to call him by his new name. I'm not going to lie...it's kind of weird to just start calling someone by a different name. Also, it was REALLY difficult to pick a name for him when we already know him and know his personality! We haven't decided on a middle name for sure, but are planning on keeping his middle name "Anthony" more than likely. This way, we can call him by his new first name and his middle name and if he does kind of recognize Anthony, it may be less confusing to him. Then, eventually we'll just take the "Anthony" off when we are addressing him. Also, we are debating on "Anthony" for his middle name for another reason. Let's see if you notice. His new name will be...

CASON

with the middle name it is...

CASON ANTHONY

What does that sound like or make you think of? Casey Anthony? Ya...us too. Ugh. However, for transition purposes, we would like to keep Anthony as his middle name. Not sure what to do about that. Any opinions here? We toyed around with 3 different names, but kept coming back to Cason. We have said for a little while now that if were had adopted (or birthed) a baby boy, we would have named him Cason. We didn't think that we'd ever have the opportunity to name a child again though. And Cason actually fits him so well. He looks like a Cason to us. Honestly, he's never really looked like an Anthony to us.

Now, we understand that many of you will not find it easy to just start calling him Cason and that is FINE. We won't be all crazy about it and correct all of you. :) In fact, we accidentally call him Anthony on a pretty regular basis as well. It still feels weird for us to call him Cason. So please don't feel weird about calling him Anthony still...Cason will catch on eventually. :)