Ok, one of these is silly and the other one is facinating, but I’m playing with both, and they’re oddly compelling.

1) www.notjunior.com: This is a site where your friends and family can contribute name suggestions, and rank & comment on other people’s suggestions.

I have no intention of letting anyone other than the two of us actually decide anything about what Lil Smudge is called when s/he is born, BUT, I think the idea is interesting, and I think it could be a fun exercise. I’m curious about what everyone thinks.

Also, I feel obligated to play with the site since they were VERY nice and changed the site in less than 24 hours when I sent them an email saying "Gee, I’d really like to try this, but we’re lesbian parents, and neither of us wants to be "Dad" or use one of the "Dad" icons." It still says "Dad" on the search page, but the sign-up page for parents is now "Parent One" and "Parent Two" and you can pick any of the 10 icons.

2) BabyNameWizard: Even cooler than NotJunior is this wild animated name tracker. My cube neighbor and his wife are expecting in about a month, and he shared this site with me. I’ve been looking up everyone’s names — it’s just facinating. And the graphics are cool.