Lucy Q

Each of our kids had a womb name. We didn't want to refer to them as just "the Baby," and we certainly didn't want to call any of them "It." Ian was Ziggy (the Zygote) and Sage was Phoebe (the Fetus). Lucy was just Bonus, and that's what she's been. We have several theories about Lucy, one of which is that her little body is ill-equipped to contain her largeness of spirit. If you don't know what's on Lucy's mind at any given time, you must not be in the same building. A biter, a shouter, a sprinter, a hugger--Lucy has no intermediate step between feeling and action. Lucy is as Lucy does.

You'd think it would be easy to give a name to this phenomenon, but we had a hard time getting all our ducks in a row. Does this look like a Zoe Renata?

What about Katherine Midnight?

Once we settled on Lucy for a first name, finding a matching middle name was still just as hard. With an October birthdate, Lucy Octavia was always a contender:

But K. and I also liked the Portuguese variant, Lucy Beatriz:

Finally we settled on Lucy Quinn, which seemed to fit her at the time. However, as she's gotten older she hasn't seemed to grow into it in the same way that Ian has grown into Hyrum and Sage has grown into Dorothy. The saving grace is that she makes a very fine Lucy Q:

Sometimes K. and I still talk half-seriously about changing her middle name. This never gets anywhere because (1) in our state this requires a court appearance, (2) we'd have to change her church records, (3) this would surely nonplus some relative or other, (4) we still can't agree on another middle name, and (5) seriously, who changes their child's name after breaking it in for five years? After giving it some thought, I think I've got a better idea: Middle Nickname. For years we've joked that Lucy's middle name should have been an exclamation point, and while I'd never inflict that on her officially, I see no reason why it shouldn't gain some unofficial traction. In short, friends and family, you can keep sending those birthday checks to Lucy Quinn, but feel free to think of her, in your heart of hearts, as Lucy [!]. Heaven knows we do.