It seems my new pet has gone missing.  Thank goodness I didn’t end up with something bigger, like a rat or a tortoise or something I wouldn’t really want crawling around the house unattended.  But I didn’t see this coming.  If anything, I thought my new ladybug friend would kick the bucket.  I wouldn’t have guessed that he’d vanish.  I don’t think the kids got to him; they wouldn’t have been able to keep something like that a secret for long.  But today when I went to check on Francis the ladybug he wasn’t in his cage.  And by the way, the name is after the ladybug in A Bug’s Life, not my late Grandmother – that would be FrancEs and yes, I still want a daughter to have that name.

Yesterday at the thrift store I found a bug catcher for a quarter, so I bought it and put Francis in his new home last night.  Today when I went to check on him, he’s no where to be found in the bug catcher.  My husband and I both examined the lid, and we don’t think he escaped, so my guess is that he’s hiding in these little pockets in the bug catcher that hold the screws – people can’t see in them, but they’re ladybug-sized.  And I think ladybugs hibernate during the winter, so we might not be hearing from Francis for awhile if he crawled into one of those holes to hibernate…  Nuts, he had a bunch of visitors all lined up!

Well, we have narrowed down our choices for baby names!  (Insert drum roll here) They are:
FIRST NAMES:
Mallory
Lindsay
Evangeline
MIDDLE NAMES:
Autumn
Athina (or Athena as it’s usually spelled; I like the first one better)
Alexandra

We know we want a middle name that starts with an “A” because all of our girls have one.  We’re just not sure which name we like with which middle name.  If you’ve read my previous posts, especially the one called Baby Names, you can see that I’ve given up my ideal name of Frances.  Ok, it’s not my ideal name, that’s why I gave up on it, but I did want to name the baby after my late grandmother.  I just wish she had a name that was a little easier to convince my husband to name our baby and for me to WANT to name the baby.  Anyway, these are the final three so we’ll see how it turns out.  I am the one who signs the birth certificate in the hospital, so I can always sneak whatever I want on there, including Frances if I so desire…  JUST KIDDING!  I wouldn’t do that…  unless they pump me full of some crazy drugs to get through the labor…  then I can’t be held accountable for my actions.  But nothing is set in stone yet; we’re still a few months away – I will site the example of my youngest-for-now.  Her name was going to be Sydney until I was about 7 months pregnant…  then all of a sudden I said to my husband, I don’t think I like that name anymore!  I thought it was the hormones causing my sudden change of heart, but to my surprise, my husband agreed that HE didn’t like the name anymore either!  We think it might have had something to do with our other daughters calling her Cindy – they could not grasp the concept of reversing the sounds.  So anyway, these are the finalists in the name race for now, I will keep you posted on any changes!