Apparently other gay and lesbian parents are more creative, according to a new list of the top “gayby” names recently released by Goodkin.com.  Based on a survey of hundreds of gay and lesbian parents, the top names for babies born into our families are, by and large, not the same as the top baby names overall.

How are they different?  Think less Jane Austen, more Harper Lee (Harper, in fact, rings in at number 5 for girl names).   Parents overall (which means mostly straight) are still opting for Emma, Abigail, Isabel, Jacob and Ethan.  Not so the gay dads and lesbian moms.  The top names for boys raised by gay/lesbian parents include Atticus, Charlie, Milo and Dashiel.  Girl names include Vivienne, Charlotte, Billie and Scarlett.  Remarkably, only 3 names – Alex/Alexander and Noah for boys and Ava for girls – showed up on the top ten lists for both gay and straight parents.

Maybe gay and lesbian parents (other than, apparently, Jane and me) are bigger risk-takers or more out-of-the-box thinkers when naming their kids.  It’s possible that gay parents feel they have more leeway to be creative given the fact that our families are already different.  Or maybe gay parents are at the front end of the next trend.  Who knows?  A couple of years from now, little Atticus’ may just be showing up in nurseries everywhere.

I feel compelled to add, though, that Jane and I might have been more daring than it seems.  Hannah’s middle name is Elisabeth.  With an s.

“What’s wrong?”  I immediately feel my body lurch into the red zone.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says.  “It’s just . . . we have a cat situation.”

A cat situation?  Did one of our cats get sick?  Get lost?  Kill a raccoon?

The next voice I hear is Hannah’s.

“Hi, Mama,” she says.  “We’re at the Humane Society.”

Oh, good lord.  I go away to Texas where I cannot nix the idea and they run off to the Humane Society.

“There’s the cutest kitten here and his name is Moe,” she continues.

No, I think, his name is Ours.

“Put Mommy back on the phone,” I say.

I hear Jane’s voice.

“What, exactly, were you thinking?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she says.  “We just kind of ended up here and he really is adorable.”

Jane is barely capable of driving by the Humane Society without a cat springing into the back seat of the car.  As Jane tells it, she took Hannah to lunch in our old neighborhood and, on the way, they drove by the road that leads to the Humane Society.  Apparently, the magnetic pull was too much.

“He’s black and white and has a little star above his nose,” Jane says.  “But I wanted to talk to you first,” she adds.  Which, honestly, is very sweet, although the deed is so, so done.

Oddly, I’m not upset, although it would not be my first choice to live with three cats.  My first choice would have been the puppy.  That we do not have.  But there are two girls in my life who are sappy for cats and they’re standing in the Humane Society in Minnesota holding fluffy little Moe while I’m standing in a hotel room in Texas.  Moe might as well move in and make his bed on my pillow.

“It’s fine,” I say.

“He really is cute,” Jane says.

Hannah gets back on the phone.

“And there’s this other little kitty named Burt, and he’s Moe’s brother, and do you want to hear him mew?”  I hear a sound that is disturbingly like a dog toy being squeezed.

“Put Mommy back on the phone, Hannah!”

“Burt???????”

This may have been part of the wily plan, but when I find out that Burt is not, in fact, part of the adoption package, I feel as though I have dodged a furball.  Suddenly having three cats will not be bad at all because, hey, it’s not four.  Lucky me.

Water makes Hannah almost immediately happy and relaxed.  It always has.  When she was six months old, we took her to a class at the YMCA to get her introduced to being in a pool.  Jane and I took her into the water and, while the other kids were splashing or crying, Hannah fell fast asleep.

This weekend, though, there was no sleeping.  She is seven now and prefers to spend her time at the pool leaping off the edge, doing cannonballs, swimming “laps,” and diving down to grab my legs and upend me.

“Mommy doesn’t tan well, does she?” Hannah asked, mid-splash.

“No, she doesn’t,” I said.  Jane is fair and freckled.  She burns easily, tans rarely.

“Do you tan easily?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.  ”Just like you.”  Which is pure chance, actually, since my genes are not shared by her.

Hannah climbed on my back and directed me around the pool like a giant seahorse.  This way.  That way.  Now back.

“I think I know what happened,” she said, finally.

“What?” I asked.

“When you and Mommy first kissed, I think she got some of your cooties.  That’s why I tan well,” she said.

Oh, I think.  And, oh dear.  Evidently, we need to revisit our conversations about genetics.  Soon.

And then she adds, “Either that, or it was my donor.”

LOOME (what you weave on)

CONTINU (something that keeps going)

and my personal favorite,

CARISMAS TREE (something you might decorate in December).

It brings Hannah no end of joy to draw all of the little body parts of the poor hangman, right down to the eyes, hair and incongruous smile.  She tops it off by writing on the side, WINNER HANNAH.

Loser, Mama.

My main goal now is to get home before midnight.  There’s a specific reason for this, other than, you know, sleep.  I have my first radio interview tomorrow for She Looks Just Like You — with Newstalk Radio in IRELAND.  In fact, the book seems to be getting attention abroad — the publisher has also had inquiries about interviews from media in England and Australia.

It is true, of course that the daily lives of gay parents are much like the lives of straight parents — picking up after the kid, staying up nights when he’s sick, going along on school field trips.  And indeed, the New York Times review notes that “the primary objective of ‘The Kid’ is to make the potentially confrontational seem all-embracing and prosaic.”  But does this erase gay culture?  No!  Because we (or at least the guys) can take it onto the stage and sing about it.

I am nervous, yes, but also excited.  I’m also jazzed by how often people say they’re interested in She Looks Just Like You because: a) they are GLBT parents themselves; 2) they are related to GLBT parents; 3) they are friends of GLBT parents; 4) their kid goes to school with someone who has GLBT parents.  We are everywhere and that is a radical change.

There are the obvious things, of course.  You can kennel the dog.  You don’t have to send the dog to college.

But then there are the less obvious things.  Kids are way wilier than puppies.  A puppy will shake your hand 10,000 times if you keep giving him liver-flavored treats.  But kids?  They keep changing on you.  And this (in addition to the pedophile and incest part) is where Mr. Huckabee is so wrong:  raising kids is all about experimentation.  Yes, you can have rules and standards.  Yes, it’s important to be consistent.  But what works one day may very well not work the next.  It’ll drive you crazy, especially if you expect a kid to respond like a dog.  But it’s a good thing, really.  Parents have to keep experimenting precisely because kids keep growing and learning and stretching out in new directions.  If they didn’t do any of these things, parenting wouldn’t be nearly as challenging or nearly as fun.  And if they didn’t do any of these things, kids would grow up to be well-trained, perhaps, but not the leaders, the artists, the thinkers that we (presumably) want them to be.