Smokey??

I've gotten exactly 15 e-mails with titles ranging from "Poor little Smokey" to "What's wrong with Smokey?" Perhaps his nickname deserves a bit of explanation.

He's named, in a roundabout sort of way, after Smokey Robinson. Justin and I were trying to come up with good names, and after a particularly bad suggestion on Justin's part (I want to say it was "Thor" but I can't remember for sure), the process went steadily downhill. We had seen Smokey Robinson on some TV show earlier that night, and Justin suggested Smokey. This, in our slap-happy state of perpetual sleep deprivation, sent us into uncontrollable laughter for quite some time. As soon as we would come close to recovering, one of us would say something like, "Imagine the Christmas card next year, Happy Holidays from Justin, Lauren, Claire, Hayden and Smokey," and we were back to uncontrollable laughter. Any name that can make you laugh for a half hour deserves to stick around.

If you love the name Smokey, you'll love his middle name...Juice. That's right, Smokey Juice Sumner. You can't deny that it has a ring to it. Juice is after some college football player we saw in one of the many bowl games I was forced to watch earlier this month. We just thought it flowed well.

If you're curious, Claire was Genghis Leroy before we brought her home (although that name was given to her by her grandparents out of frustration with us for not disclosing her name) and Hayden was Pizza Tivo (two of our favorite things!).

ETA: Good guess, Amanda, on Smokey being a tribute to our time in Tennessee, but surely you know that if we were to name our kid after a SEC mascot, he'd have to be Uga. Go Dawgs. :)