Their stories are heart-warming and funny and entertaining and wonderful - everything that being a parent is. I hope you enjoy this second round of guest bloggers as much as I do! Thanks again, gals, for playing along.
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Megan from My Embellished Truth
Naming a baby can be a daunting task, even if you and your baby are the only two people in the world with no one to answer to, even if you mom can't make fun of your choices and your grandma can't look at you cross-eyed and say 'Whaaa??' .. squatting in the woods, squeezing out that slimy bundle of joy, staring into your gooey newborn's eyes as you snuggle close, and having only the heavens to listen as you speak your child's name for the first time...
Where was I?
Oh yeah.. Baby naming. My oldest was not only my first child, he was also the first grandchild for my parents. And? He was the first grandchild for my husband's parent. Oh, and the first great-grandchild for both sides as well. Yeah, you get the idea. No, I wasn't 15.. though I wasn't far off. We were 19 (him) and 20 (me) when we welcomed our first shortie into our life and married just over a year.
My husband tends to be rather mysterious about his name on the internet.. So I'm not going to tell you what it is. Those of you who know him online, know him as 'OnlyAman' or just 'Aman'. I'll just say, his name is long. And it is tradition in his family that the first born son (though honestly, there really hadn't been any girls for a couple generations) would receive the father's name as a middle name. Great. So we had a big long name as a middle name and had to find a first name to pair up with it.
I won't bore you with the details of all the discarded names (Dante, Dermot, Tristan, Max..) or all the ways my parents made fun of them. But I will tell you how we found the one we bestowed upon him. We used to do Renaissance Fairs. Yes. We did. As in dress up and perform reenactments. Now, when one performs in a Renaissance Fair, one dons a persona. My husband? His fair name was Aidan. Through all the names that we pondered over, Aidan stayed in the running. We loved it. Also, we were all for giving our kids Gaelic names. So Aidan, or 'little fiery one', it was.
Our second child was much easier to name. I read a couple of Frank McCourt's books. One of the characters in the book was named Kieran (his brother, I think). I loved the name. Our next son would be Kieran, or 'little dark one'.
Next came the baby who's name has little meaning.. or rather a hard to determine meaning. Our neighbors in the apartment above us also loved Gaelic names. Their son's name was Torrin. I loved it. I stole it. Our next child was Torrin, or 'from the hills'.. or 'little bird'... or 'the boy with the name that really doesn't mean anything'. Whatever.
So. I had three boys. I really wasn't sure if we'd have any more kids. But we did talk often about adopting a daughter. On more than one occasion, during church and during prayer, I prayed for a daughter and felt God's assurance that we would one day have a little girl. One afternoon, as I was putzing around on the internet a few months after Torrin was born, I came across a lovely name. Eliana. It means 'my God has answered me'. And I knew that that would be my daughters name. A couple months later, I got pregnant again. This time we waited until birth (our first homebirth) to find out the sex. It was a girl!
When Eliana was a year old, we moved from California to Iowa. Before moving, I gave away all of my 'baby stuff' that we no longer needed. I also left behind every stitch of maternity clothes I had. I warned my husband 'I'm leaving all this baby and maternity stuff behind.. you know what that means, don't you?..... I'll get pregnant as soon as we get there.' About two weeks after we arrived in Iowa, I found out I was pregnant with number 5. Again we waited to find out the sex of our baby upon welcoming the child into the world in our own bedroom.. Another girl! And another Hebrew name - Joella, meaning 'my God be willing'.
You can find Megan on her blog and HERE.We haven't had a whole lot of rhyme or reason behind our baby naming.. but have kept with the Gaelic boy names and Hebrew girl names. We like unique names (who doesn't?) but of course are not immune to the 'we thought it was unique and now every other child the same age and younger has that name too' issue.. Sorry Aidan. Still, I'm quite happy with the names we've picked. And if you're not, you can suck it.
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Lisa from Unfiltered Insanity
You can find Lisa on her blog and HERE.When I was pregnant with Sophia, Mr. B and I talked a lot about names because we were both really adamant that her name either mean something, or that she was named after someone. We came up with Sophia Arielle. We both loved the name Sophia and after looking up the definition, /_wise_/, we decided it was even more beautiful. I'd always wanted an "Ari" (which is funny, because we never call her that!), but we came up with Arielle because it flows with Sophia better than Ari and when we looked it up it means, _/lion of God/_. So, Sophie's name means "Wise Lioness of God." And we loved it almost as much as we love her. And her name is perfect for her.
Annabelle Kate was actually going to be Lilian Kate, because Mr. B always liked the name "Lily." However, it didn't flow into our criteria of naming after, since "Kate" is after my best friend, Katey. "Annabelle" just came to me. I wrote it down and I fell in love and it works for us because a few key people in our family have the middle name, Anne, and my little cousin is named "Anna." (who is the daughter of my aunt who I was named after, so I kinda kept that rolling a bit longer!) We got a lot of crap for this name. No one really liked it. I didn't care. She was Annabelle from then on and she's so sweet that she couldn't ever be any other name.
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Sara from In Lahman's Terms
My son's name is Isaac Benjamin. The middle name was easy; my husband's name is Benjamin and I nixed the Ben Jr. suggestion as soon as we found out the baby was a boy. We could not agree on ANYTHING for a first name. We shot down every name the other came up with (kinda like that scene in "Friends" where Ross and Rachel veto every name). I was pulling for Elliot, and my husband just flat out said no. We picked so many names, but nothing felt right. We had ALOT of input from family and friends, most was not constructive. One night we were watching TV and out of the blue, my husband suggested "Isaac." He said it just came to him. We decided to sleep on it. The next day we both still liked it, and it just felt right to us. We knew that was our son's name. We said nothing to family and friends. 4 days later our son was born, and the name fits. Isaac means "he who laughs" and he is one happy little baby.Find Sara on her blog and HERE.
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Stephanie from Mommy*Mama*Mom
My husband and I both have fairly common names, Christopher and Stephanie. We were each one of 5 or 6 people in all our classes with those names. Even before we were engaged or truly talking about having children, we had agreed that if we had kids, our children would NOT have extremely popular names. We wanted pretty, not too out there, but still unusual names.
Our first child came much sooner than we expected and in the midst of chaos and turmoil. We were newly married and facing an issue that most couples (thankfully) never have to deal with on top of living over a thousand miles apart. I immediately told Chris that I wanted her name to be Hope. She was the one shining beacon of hope that we saw in our lives right then. Chris did not want that to be her first name for some reason. He agreed to it being the middle though. I think I went through 5 different baby name books. None of them we could agree on. Finally he gave up and said that I'd just have to figure it out myself. That night he called me. He had been (re)playing a video game that he really liked -- Kingdom of Hearts. The main character's name was Kairi, he wanted to know what I thought of it. I will be honest, it took me 3 months to remember how to say it right. I finally figured out how to say it after playing the game myself. I fell in love. (Kairi is pronounced K-eye-ree.) Kairi Hope is my princess. She reflects her name to me: pretty, unusual, but not completely "out there". Her name means melody which is also fitting as she loves music of all sorts.Find Stephanie on her blog and HERE.
Our second (and last) child was a boy. We didn't even begin discussing names until we knew he was a boy. I had dreamt my whole life of having a boy named Caleb James. Unfortunately, right about the time I found out I was pregnant, I had 3 cousins born named Caleb/Kaleb. Chris didn't want our son to be confused with someone else and nixed the first name. I didn't give him a choice on the second. It WOULD be James. I think I sent Chris 6 or 7 lists of names I liked. All were nixed. One day he came home. He had a name he loved. Alex. I was told that night "You can name the boy whatever you want to, but I'm going to call him Alex." I'm still not sure how Alex fit the prerequisite of an unusual name, but Chris was in love. And I loved the idea of calling him Alexander James -- especially when he was in trouble, it just flows off the tongue. How bad is it that I agreed to my son's name based off of how authoritative it seems when I'm yelling? LOL Chris and I primarily call him Alex, but from time to time we call him Alex, Axis (how Kairi pronounced his name for months), and Alexander. His name means defender of the people, and he will defend his sister, his mommy, and his puppy to the end of the earth.
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I have to say "THANKS!" again a million times over. I love getting bloggers together for guest posts. It's a lot of fun and it spices up the norm! Hopefully, I can wrangle up some more gals and get a Volume 3 out soon! Please take some time to visit these amazing women on their blogs....
And for the love of all that is good and right, GET YOURSELF A TWITTER ACCOUNT!
I like hearing these stories. Baby names are a favorite topic seeing as I have about a million pregnant friends.
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