Jennifer, Jenny, and Jen

My name is one of the best gifts my mom gave me. From what she and my dad always used to tell me, she was the decision maker on the choice of my name. I love it and all its different versions. Family and friends all refer to me by a different nickname, which I especially love because when I hear each one, they conjure up varied forms of endearment. In my family, I am known as Jenny. Whenever I hear a cousin call out my name, it makes me think of home and the younger version of myself - skinny chicken legs, glasses, and playing with my sister and all the cousins at grandma's house. The funny thing is I never asked to be called Jenny while at school. For some reason, I always asked the teacher to leave me as Jennifer, and you can bet this discussion always came up because during grade school there was always at least one other Jennifer in my class. I guess you can call it the nerd in me to leave it all business-like and grown-up to request Jennifer. But as I got older, entered high school, and played sports, Jennifer became Jen and then my maiden name got cut in half too. Now, I was Jen Naps. This nickname followed me into college, and most of my best friends will still call me by this name every now and then even though we're in our 30's, almost all married, and with families. And wouldn't you know there is another Jennifer in the group. I think it was about year ago when the spelling of Jen became a big topic of discussion. Some were spelling it with two "n's" and sometimes they'd refer to me as the two "n" Jen or vice versa. After that, the other Jen and I explained the reasoning for our preference in spelling. As you can tell by the name of my blog, I am a one "n" Jen kind of gal. I don't have a strong argument for going with the one "n." I just think it looks better, and I guess you can call it the girly-girl in me to go with that logic.

As Braedan grows older, I hope he appreciates our decision to give him the name we chose. There is no way you can shorten his name to create a nickname from it, but we've come up with a couple pet names (Poops and Poopy are our favorites) that we hope he'll love hearing just as much as we love using them.