My nine-year-old daughter came home last week and said we needed to buy a baby gift for a teacher at her school.

“His name is Ikea,” Daisy said excitedly.

“Whose name is Ikea?” I asked, not knowing if she was referring to the teacher or the infant.

“Mr. Verstraete’s baby,” she said. “He’s a boy!”

“Ikea?” I asked. “Are you sure his name’s Ikea?”

“Yes, of course,” she responded, as though I was nuts for asking.

But I guess anything goes nowadays when it comes to names. I shouldn’t have been surprised about a child sharing the same moniker as a Swedish store, particularly after reading in the news that someone named their baby Hashtag, inspired by a commonly-used social media symbol.

And who am I to judge? Once upon a time I was considered weird for the name I had chosen for my firstborn.

“Buster is a dog’s name,” I was scolded countless times during my pregnancy when I made the mistake of sharing the name I’d picked out. So what, I thought. It was also the name of a famous actor and an even more famous shoe.

I absolutely loved the name Buster. It was fun and strong and it had character. I wasn’t about to let the opinions of others change my mind. Except there was one opinion that kind of mattered: that of Buster’s dear old dad.

“Let’s think of a few other options and pick one once he’s born,” Paul reasoned. Fine, I thought. He’ll fall in love with the name by then for sure.

But when our beautiful baby boy arrived with his spiky, blonde hair he didn’t look like a Buster to either of us. He looked like a Sam, so that’s what we called him.

“Buster would have been fine,” my friend, who’s a teacher, said about my original choice. “It’s all the purposely misspelled and hard-to-pronounce names that drive me crazy.”

Like Quvenzhane?

My daughter and I recently saw the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild with Quvenzhane Wallis, the youngest Oscar-nominated actor in history, and we immediately nicknamed her Q. It just seemed easier.

If anyone’s to blame for names getting stranger and more unique as the years go by, let’s blame the celebrities.  I mean, really – who was naming their kids anything all that bizarre before Frank Zappa introduced his children Dweezil, Moon Unit, Ahmet and Diva Thin Muffin to the world?

At the time, people were horrified. Since then, many celebrities have followed suit and it’s become the norm in Hollywood.

Names like Alcamy, Apple, Banjo, Bingham, Blue Angel, Blue Ivy, Destry, Exton, Fifi Trixibelle, Jermajesty, Kal-El, Kyd, Maddox, Memphis Eve, Moses, Ocean, Pilot Inspektor, Rocket, Rumer, Seargeoh and the list goes on. Heck, actor Rob Morrow named his child Tu. How would you like to have the name Tu Morrow?

With websites out there dedicated to listing all the strange names that babies are getting saddled with these days, it’s easy to see that this trend is growing. Am I complaining? Nah. Why not get creative and unique when naming our offspring? This certainly can’t be worse than giving them a name that they share with three other kids in the class.

Naming our children is a big responsibility, and everyone’s not going to like what we choose. But as long as we’re picking names we truly love and not just making up stuff so we can laugh at how hilarious we are, we should be okay. If the kid ends up hating their name, which some do, “normal” or not, they can always legally change it to something else later.

Ikea might do that. Except, his name’s not actually Ikea. Turns out it’s Atticus.

I guess I’ll be returning my gift of an Ikea train set and getting him a copy of “To Kill a Mockingbird” instead.

Lori Welbourne is a syndicated columnist. She can be contacted at LoriWelbourne.com 

Eleven years ago, when I was running my own family daycare and supervising seven children aged three and under, music was my saviour.

No, I didn’t put my headphones on and crank my iPod to drown out the sound of the kids. I’d put a CD in the ghetto blaster, announce to the crew it was party time, and play some of their favourite tunes from musicians like Raffi, Fred Penner and Norman Foote.

Watching the little ones prance around in their own unique ways was an instant delight and a welcome reprieve, even in my most frazzled moments. Their CDs weren’t background music in my home, they were special, and reserved for carved-out blocks of time in our day when we all needed a break. Most of all me.

So when I recently had the opportunity to meet one of my musical saviours who unknowingly helped me keep my sanity all those years, I had two words for him: Thank you.

Norman Foote was on the receiving end of those words and was about to put on a show to entertain a lot more than just seven youngsters and me. He’d be playing for hundreds of folks, ranging from babies to seniors, and delighting them all. On top of that, he would be managing about 100 elementary-aged children up on stage with him who would be serving as his backup singers for their very first time.

I felt like I was meeting a superhero. A superhero with no cape.

“The most important thing to me is that these kids have a blast,” he said pointing to the excited students who were standing on stage ready to entertain the audience. “And,” he added, “to put on a great show for everyone out there.”

He succeeded on both counts.

As I watched from my seat in the theatre I couldn’t help but notice what a fabulous time we were all having, particularly my eight year old daughter, Daisy, who I could barely keep my eyes off of.

She wasn’t sitting beside me, she was one of those students on the stage. Singing, laughing and gesturing dramatically, she was clearly having the time of her life. For months she and the other back up singers had been learning Norman Foote songs and the movements to go along with his lyrics. They’d obviously been paying attention.

After the fun, funny show was over, the energy in the place was high and I wanted to bottle it and sell it for millions. Not knowing how to do that, I waited until the beloved musician finished signing autographs and swooped in with my video camera to capture Daisy conduct her very first surprise interview him.

As he graciously answered her questions it dawned on me that his writing style is similar to mine. His songs, like my columns, are about the everyday. He writes about grandfather clocks and family pets and things like the crazy colourful shirt he fell in love with at a consignment store.

Of course, the comparisons end there. Light years ahead of me, he’s a Juno Award-winning musician while I can barely carry a tune. He’s also a brilliant family performer who makes entertaining for all ages look easy when I know the opposite is true.

Norman Foote is a superhero alright. He might not have a cape, but he’s got one heck of a nice, new second-hand shirt.

To watch Daisy’s interview with him please visit KidTalkwithDaisy.com

My eight year old daughter did something recently that I’ve never done in my life: she sang all alone on stage.

Over the years there’s been the rare occasion I’ve been too intoxicated to fend off friends who dragged me up to sing karaoke or mortify some local band by joining in. But never have I deliberately walked out to sing a real song in front of a real audience all by myself, like Daisy did. If I ever had the inclination to do so, I can’t imagine I’d even have the strength.

Singing is hard work. When I’m belting out lyrics from the comfort of my little orange Beetle I feel like the wind’s been knocked out of me before I even hit the chorus if I’m trying to sing in-tune. Should I just crank up the volume of the stereo to cover up the fact that I’m way off-key? Yep, that helps. I sound terrific then.

I’ve heard that public speaking is the number one fear for a lot of people, but I’m guessing that if I took a poll, most people would rather do that than sing in public. And anyone who wouldn’t must have better pipes than me.

My daughter certainly does.

She’s been singing since she was a toddler. She often falls asleep with headphones on singing away to Miley Cyrus, Fergie or LMFAO, so when I suggested she take singing lessons to accompany her guitar lessons I thought she’d be all over it. She wasn’t.

“But, Mama,” she protested. “I don’t want anyone to hear me.”

After I explained that only Terilyn Spooner, her guitar teacher, would be hearing her, she agreed. Neither of us had any idea that only two short months later she’d be singing solo in a Christmas concert. I didn’t even know until that very night because she had kept it her own fearful secret.

When Daisy walked out on the stage by herself she looked really nervous. The music started and she softly sang into the microphone looking out at the crowd, and then she promptly forgot the words and froze like a deer in the headlights. Terilyn stopped the music and asked if she wanted to start over. I wasn’t sure how she’d react, but she started singing again and finished the entire song.

She didn’t belt it out like she would have done at home, and she didn’t dance around like she normally would either. She stood still, arms crossed, looking terrified and quietly singing. As soon as the song ended she bolted across the stage and down the stairs to take a seat in the audience, only to be called back up 10 minutes later to sing the duet that I did know about.

Later she cried from a pounding headache and an aching tummy. But after a good talk she seemed to appreciate her wonderful accomplishment.

She faced her fear and she conquered it. And in the process she did something her parents and big brother have never had the courage to do: she sang on stage all alone in front of an audience. She now knows that if she can do that, she can accomplish anything she sets her mind to.

To watch the video that accompanies this column please visit LoriWelbourne.com