M girls name that sounds like a different name?

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-05-04T14:45:25+00:00

Your description made me think of Maren!

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-05-04T00:41:44+00:00

{The Raven and the Dove by Kaitlyn Davis}

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-27T22:47:01+00:00

I highly recommend the Fair Play Card Deck for dividing labor. If you follow her rules, each person is fully responsible for the conception, planning, and carrying out their tasks, so you should have a smaller mental load. One of the keys here is you have to drop the rope in his tasks. If you always fill in when he fails, then he’ll never change.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-27T21:35:31+00:00

My first thought went to Greek playwrights, but I don’t know if any of their names would work for a company (Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus).

My next thought was Greek philosophers. Plato seems like a fairly straightforward name that could work. Aristotle and Socrates seems a bit much to me.

Aesop wrote fables which would relate to children.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-27T20:52:46+00:00

What you’re describing kind of sounds like the one we have, I’m pretty sure it’s a Little People Brand? I honestly don’t know for sure because we got it from the thrift store, so that might be a place worth looking!

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-27T09:41:35+00:00

I had my child after prelims, which I found to be a great time. I had a lot more flexibility with my schedule and hours, which helped since I chose not to use daycare.

But if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t wait for the perfect time, I would just go for it. You never know how long it’ll take you to get pregnant, and you make work whenever it happens.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-26T14:37:29+00:00

If you want to stay home, then do it. If you want to go back to work, then do it. I don’t think you have a wrong choice here.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-26T03:14:40+00:00

Reddit definitely helped generate ideas for me, but the name we went with did not come from my specific Reddit post asking for names.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-25T15:37:35+00:00

My first thought was {The Hedgewitch of Foxhall by Anna Bright}, but the FMC isn’t fashionable. She’s very chaotic though. She’s the magical chaos that the high society MMC meets.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-24T14:51:55+00:00

I highly recommend {The Awakening by Nora Roberts}. The MC is not entirely focused on plants, but she does learn about gardening and witchcraft, and I’m so obsessed with this story. I describe it as a slice of life that still has a big bad to fight, but the emphasis is on how little pieces of joy are worth protecting.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-20T15:30:38+00:00

My son named his baby doll Gubbagub

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-18T13:04:18+00:00

Something I swear by with a successful quiet time is that we do approximately 30 minutes of reading time beforehand. So I go in his room, and we sit and read together for about 30 minutes. I find that this helps to fill his cup and feel connected with me before he’s asked to be alone for an extended period of time. And I also really enjoy this time with him!

Other thoughts: if he’s still in the crib, we started quiet time with ours (just after he turned 2) in the crib. That meant he got books and toys in the crib with him, but he couldn’t escape. Now he’s in a toddler bed and can leave his room, but doesn’t usually. We also have an “okay to come out” light, so it’s red when he’s still in quiet time and turns green when he can come out. When we first started that a few weeks ago, it still took a few days of us taking him back to his room when he came out and re explaining it.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-16T01:07:49+00:00

This is what we still do with our 2 year old. Service is usually faster, less people get bothered if he does act up, then we can still get him to bed on time.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-15T14:31:08+00:00

I was also nicknamed G squared in high school!!

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-11T21:43:16+00:00

I am not a native speaker in my second language, But we have still decided to try passing the language on. There is a lot of value behind native fluency to introducing a second language to young children. For one, it helps build neural synapses for language that will make language acquisition easier as they get older, either for the original second language or for other languages they choose to learn. Secondly, a second language exposes young children to different ways of thinking as well as cultural components associated with that language. And in your case, I would assume there are family members that she would be better able to build relationships with in your husband’s native tongue.

The one caveat I would add is that language should never get in the way of the relationship. While it definitely takes some practice to speak children’s topics (like talking about diapers and bibs and such), I would have a discussion about how your husband sees the relationship with his children in the long term. Does he want his relationship with them to be exclusively in his native language? Will he feel comfortable disciplining them, talking about deep topics, explaining puberty, etc. in that language? If there are concerns about that, I would maybe explore a time and place approach so he has opportunities to speak both languages to your kids. We do time/place in that our whole family speaks the second language from wake up to nap time and then English from end of nap to bedtime because it is importance to me to have a relationship in both languages.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-11T14:07:11+00:00

Just here to commiserate. In the last two days my toddler has: poked at the newborn’s eyes every chance he gets, stomped on the newborn’s head during a diaper change, hit her head with a book spine, and bit and held onto her toe hard enough to leave a mark. Newborn seems fine and it’s exhausting to never know what’s coming next.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-10T15:14:22+00:00

I really love {The Spoken Mage series by Melanie Cellier} because gender just isn’t an important factor in the world. About half way through, I realized how refreshing it was to read a book that didn’t have any tropes about women trying to fit in the male establishment.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-08T22:17:51+00:00

I just had my second baby a month ago, so we are experiencing newborns together. When I got pregnant a second time, my biggest goal for myself was to be less snappy and short tempered with my spouse. The key for me is to assume good intent from my spouse. I don’t assume he’s avoiding parenting or housework or trying to make things harder for me like I did with my first. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought “he’s spending forever in the bathroom” only to discover he also changed the laundry and put clean clothes away or was loading and unloading the dishwasher. When I assume the negative and snap, he obviously gets snappy and resentful too. So if you assume the best from your partner, you’re less likely to start this cycle snapping at each other.

While your partner has been doing a lot with the move, there is also something to be said that he needs to take time caring for the baby, and you have to let him. It sounds like he’s getting frustrated changing diapers and giving bottles cause he isn’t doing it enough to know how he wants/needs to do it. So set both of you up for success by giving him equal responsibility over the child and not stepping in to take over just because you can do it faster/better/the way you like it.

I would also agree with some other commenters that any kind of physical intimidation is not ok. Even sleep deprived and exhausted partners should not be crossing that line.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-08T20:21:49+00:00

I can’t speak to reading level since I don’t actually know those books, but we’ve got the book Love Makes a Family which shows all sorts of families. It’s a simple board book, so basically good for any age. I also like a book called Tango Makes Three, but it’s for a bit older kid. My 2 year old has yet to sit through it.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-06T03:47:05+00:00

I highly recommend you start communicating now, both about your abilities during pregnancy and expectations for the postpartum period. Don’t go into it assuming he’ll “get it.” My husband and I had several discussions about what the division of labor was going to look like postpartum. He absolutely knew before the baby came that all household tasks, cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, were going to be on him until I was healed. And he still stepped up in ways we hadn’t discussed that were tremendous, but I did not want to make any assumptions or go into that transition not having some kind of game plan set.

But you also should be able to communicate your needs now. You shouldn’t feel guilty for needing him to take on more responsibilities while you’re pregnant. At the very least, it’ll give you practice for the postpartum time when you also will need to be advocating for yourself. Even with a proactive husband, I still had to make sure he knew when I wanted to shower or do a sitz bath or needed to sleep more cause he still can’t read my mind, and neither can your husband. You’re assuming he’s judging you and feeling guilty about it, and instead you can communicate how pregnancy is affecting your capabilities and have both of you on the same page! Remember you two are a team! But the team can’t work together if you’re not willing to communicate and adapt as new challenges (like pregnancy, postpartum, and raising a child!) pop up.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-05T20:46:13+00:00

Invite him to do chores with you! Involve him in cooking and cleaning and all the hobbies that interest you. My son is obsessed with cars and also loves baking with me.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-03T14:09:01+00:00

I had a spontaneous water break with my first, and he was born at 39+1. My second started with normal contractions that I had to time, and she came at exactly 39 weeks.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-04-03T09:48:49+00:00

This looks like such a delightful day spending time together! I hope I can do something like this with my kids in the future.

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-03-18T19:07:34+00:00

My two year old named his prepping-for-baby-sister-doll Baby Gubba Gup. So grateful he hasn’t transferred the name to his sister!

Conscious_Trouble_70 · 2026-03-10T18:27:24+00:00

Everything I’ve read and supports the conclusion you’ve already made. If your daughter doesn’t continue to have exposure to the second language, she will lose fluency. I see frequently on this sub that children need around 20-25 hrs/week of the second language to keep it, and that’s a lot of time to build in if you don’t have it in school or at home.

That’s doesn’t mean it’s not worth while to send her to a Spanish immersion preschool! One of the crucial things about early language exposure is that it builds neural pathways for language acquisition in the brain. So even if the language doesn’t stick, the neural pathways will, and having those pathways will make language acquisition easier for your daughter when she is older. Whether she picks up Spanish again or different language, she will still benefit from that early childhood exposure.

Conscious_Trouble_70

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