Having a fourth

I remember when we were having our 16 week gender check ultrasound (yes, we paid $50 to find out 4 weeks earlier if we were having a boy or a girl) and upon discovering we were expecting a son my first thought after the inital excitement was, "oh great, now we have to figure out whether or not to have a fourth."

So Robby is a third. As in, he has the same name as his dad and grandpa. Robert Ernest Parsons. In order to be a junior or a third, or a fourth for that matter, each person in the line has to have the exact same name. If grandpa was Robert Ernest and dad was Robert John he would not be a junior. In order to have Robert Ernest Parsons IV we had to keep the name exactly the same. I discovered lots of people didn't understand how this whole junior/third/fourth thing worked...

The hard thing about making this choice is what would we call the baby? If the middle name were normal we'd gladly have him go by that but Ernest? I don't think so... or Ernie? Kind of funny that we have the option of "Bert" with the first name and "Ernie" with the middle.... we don't love the variation of Bobby or Bob... and calling a baby Robert or Rob when his dad is Robby seems silly.... so to avoid being silly we just call dad and son Robby. Really awesome. Trust me we've heard probably every variation of Robert and Ernest and THEN SOME and we have thought about all of them... We're trying to have Robby the dad graduate to "Rob" but it's taking some time to adjust.

I decided to let Robby make the decision as to whether or not he wanted to do a fourth - it wasn't my favorite idea but it is his family's tradition and if he felt strongly about it I wanted him to be able to pass down his name. Actually, I rock-paper-scissored my naming rights away in a moment of pregnancy insanity.... but really I was going to let him decide anyway! ;) Well anyway it wasn't until we were leaving for the hospital to have the baby that Robby - I mean Rob - told me he really wanted to have the baby be Robby IV.

Here's a shot of all 4 generations of Robert Ernests. I'm glad my son has such a wonderful line of men to look up to!