A Max No More

I'm generally a very decisive person. I know what I like fairly quickly on and rarely stop to reevaluate my choice once it's made. Actually I've always liked that about myself. Seems to be the quality of a good leader, a strong minded individual. This however was NOT the case when trying to determine names for the boys (at the time we had no idea what gender they would be).  From almost the time we found out we would be adding two extra plates at the table, Patrick and I worked to come up with good name combinations.  At one time our running names for girls were Allessandra and Daniella (which started to get on my nerves  about two months into it, sounded like names for Cinderella's wicked stepsisters) and Donovan and Desmond for boys (which later changed to Max and Mateo).  We went back and forth on countless possible combinations for weeks without really coming up with anything that struck both of us as names we'd like to call our children for the rest of thier lives (Yes, naming ones child is a big decision but for some reason it wasn't that complicated with Sophia.  We came up with "Sophia" very early on only to find out later that hundreds of  thousands other people loved that  name too. Sophia was ranked number 7 most popular name in 2005 and number 1 in 2007. Go figure!)

A couple of days before "D" day we finally had it narrowed down to Max and Alex (boys), Mia and Maggie (girls) or Mia and Max (Just in case).  LONG story, ummm long, we had ourselves a Max and an Alex. (By the way, as hard as it was coming up with final names I never really had problems deciding which twin would get which name. I KNEW baby A was Alex and baby B was Max. Baby B's interwomb personality just struck me as a "Max".  I was right. :) ) 

Our final naming dilema came in the form of "congruency" (is that a word). We knew Alex would formally be Alexander (just in case he ever wanted to go with a more serious, authoritative sounding name) but we couldn't decide on a longer form of Max. Should it be Maxwell, Maximilian, Maximiliano, Maximo, or even Maddox? We strugged with this for days and actually left the hospital with Max being "Baby B Nelson". A couple of days later an employee with hospital records called and actually gave me NO MORE THAN ten minutes to decide on a name before transmitting "Baby B" to the state as our sons given name. I called Patrick at work and under the threat of being the proud parents to Baby B indefinately we decided to settle with just Max.

Okay, fast forward to two months later and our choice started to weigh on us.  It seemed so strange to have one twin with long name like Alexander and the other with just three simple letters M-A-X.  What if as an adult he too yearned for a longer, more serious sounding name? What if he forever felt inferior to his older, more "sophistically"(again I'm making up words) named brother "Alexander , The Great?" The guilt was just too much for me so on thier two month birthday we visited with a very nice notary public and officially changed  Max to Maximilian. So there... guilt averted.  Nicely done.

Now we have what sound like two Roman warriors in the family... ALEXANDER VICTOR and MAXIMILIAN XAVIER. (Wow, very manly names, if I don't say so myself). 

ALEXANDER AND MAXIMILIAN.

Watch out world! The Nelson Twins have arrived.