It's Official: the Answer to the Riddle

We are so excited that we finally picked a name for our second-born son. It has been on my mind for weeks and weeks now, and I am so glad it is finally official. It really makes the little monkey wiggling around in my tummy seem more like a person, and more like our child.

This new little boy, who is very active, very strong, and I think just a little bigger than our first son was, will hereafter be known as:

Mason Ray Becker. It has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

We weren't intentionally going for another "M" name. It was just the one that best fit our criteria. We wanted something that sounded nice with "Ray", so I was initially drawn to long "A" sounds (as in Cade and Brady . . . both discussed at some point). We also tend to like names that are traditionally surnames (Hudson, Landon, Cullen . . . also discussed). And thirdly, we wanted a name that fit with Maddox in sound (does it sound like it could be a sibling to a Maddox?), style (trendy/edgier names like Jett, Stellan, Cruz, and Luka were discussed), or lettering (all x's: Axel, Phoenix, Dexter or all M's: Micah, and Milo* . . . all of which we also discussed).

We talked about Mason lots of times, but couldn't really settle on it. Mostly because of it's rising popularity (currently #35 in the U.S., whereas Maddox was somewhere around #465). That, and Matt just didn't love it. But I kept coming back to it, since it really fit our criteria well. And Matt, after polling his co-workers, realized Mason was a good choice too.

So there you have it. Our little process of choosing a name for little Mason (aka Mase). This naming business is trickier than you would think!

*For those of you who are wondering, Milo was a very close second. But I didn't like the way it sounded with Ray or Raymond as a middle name, and I also think it has more of a "baby of the family" feel to it. So you just might hear it in a few more years.