Hannah Dare Wyatt

This past weekend, my cousin Richard and his wife Meredith became parents to the beautiful Hannah Dare Wyatt. My grandmother is now a great-grandmother and my goofy cousin Richard is a dad-- crazy.

Speaking of crazy, Gweyneth Paltrow has further ensured that her children will be beaten up in school by naming her second child Moses. And the sad part is that, because of all the crazy baby names people have been coming up with- Apple, Rumer, Moxie Crimefighter, it wasn't until just yesterday that I realized Dare is Meredith's maiden name. Until then I actually thought my cousins had cruelly named their daughter after an American Gladiator. The cool thing is, though, that whenever Hannah plays Truth or Dare she'll be able to laugh at her provokers and say "psh, dare??? Puh-lease, Dare's my middle name"

But whats even better is that, even though he had nine months to figure it out, my brother had no idea Richard and Meredith were even expecting. This clearly had him really confused when my mom contacted him to tell him that "Nana is now a great-grandmother". For some reason, neither of the married cousins came to his mind, perhaps because we don't see them very often, so Freddie immediately assumed it was my newly engaged cousin Emily. "So that's why her and Keith got engaged", he thought. Ahhh how great that'd be but, unfortunately out of wedlock children are reserved for the Knox family, my Nana's relatives. Plus, I'd like to think that if Emily did get knocked up she'd have the decency to throw a full out white trash wedding before the birth so she could walk down the isle 8 months pregnant and 20 pounds heavier. Ofcourse the summer Cape May wedding she wants would be out of the question but a winter Atlantic City one is pretty damn close, am I right? Or we could just have it in my Nana's backyard in Roxborough and hold the reception on the front porch. We'd do a little cha-cha slide, drink some of John's moonshine, and then maybe I could get knocked up by one of the groomsmen and keep the tradition going. I mean, I may pay for 30 racks in change and hold out doing my laundry until I've gone through all my bikini bottoms, but I'm sure I could handle motherhood. Hey if Richard can be a parent, I think anyone can.