Ok, ok. Here I am! I was in Oklahoma City on Tuesday for Teagan’s neurologist appointment and by the time I got home and finished with everything around here I didn’t have time to do my Tuesday post. Yesterday was just about as busy and although I felt a bit of guilt, I figured I’d just skip it this week and no one would notice.
Um, I was wrong.
I had more appointments this morning and was asked “WHERE is this weeks 10 on Tuesday?!” I figured no one was really reading them but I guess I was wrong! So do me a favor, if you’re reading and enjoying my Tuesday posts leave me a comment here on the blog. Let me know what you’d like featured as my 10 and maybe I’ll do it! If you comment and I know people are enjoying hearing me ramble then I’ll keep doing it. Maybe I’ll even do a video 10 on Tuesday soon!
So, here’s this weeks 10 a couple days late. While at the eye doctor this morning I decided to make an appointment for Sadie. She has TMJ and gets headaches frequently. When we were in Haiti our sitter noticed that her head hurt more after she’d been reading. So I figured I should probably have her checked. As I made the appointment I told the receptionist that her name was Sadie and when she asked if she had a nickname I said, “Well, that actually is her nickname.” So I told her what her name was and then had to spell it because I am one of those crazies who likes to make up names and/or spell them differently.
It just got me thinking about how much I like names. Like, I really really like names. Somewhere in an old notebook I have a list of baby names that I used to carry around with me and add to when I was pregnant. Cause you know, for awhile there I was pretty much always pregnant. I often hear a name and think, “Oh, that was on my list!” With each pregnancy we always had the “long” list and then the “short” list. It’s funny to look back and see that with the exception of 1 name, names that made the short list in one pregnancy never made it again.
So off the top of my head, cause I have no idea where that old notebook might be, here are 10 names that made our short lists. (First name short list only, cause pretty much any name starting with “E” made the middle name list!) In case you don’t know what we ended up with, we have Madilee Elizabeth, Elijah Bradley, Sheradyn Elayne and Teagan Elise.
1. Parrie – My Mom passed away in May of 1993, not quite a year after Brad and I started dating. I think she knew he was someone pretty special because not long after we met she gave me a baby name suggestion. She knew I planned on using Elizabeth as the middle name for my first-born daughter. I was pretty set on that, since I (Margo Elizabeth) was named after my sweet Mom, Lucille Elizabeth. I’ll never forget standing in the living room with her as she said, “You know, if you and Brad married and had a daughter you could name her Parrie Elizabeth. Then she’d be named after both her Grandmother’s”. Brad’s Mom’s maiden name is Parrie and I hadn’t remembered telling her that but I guess I had. I loved it and every single time I was pregnant it was an option. Especially with Madi because it was comforting to know that although she’d never see Madi on this earth she would know her name. In fact, I have cards from my baby shower that say “To Margo and baby Parrie”. For real! We didn’t use it with Madi and it became a serious option with Sadie and I even remember standing over her when she was a couple weeks just sobbing (I’m sure hormones had nothing to do with it!) thinking we’d made a huge mistake and given her the wrong name. Then we even had another chance to use it and didn’t. I love it and regret not using it but it never seemed quite “right”. Maybe God knew that it needed to be reserved for another time.
2. Madilyn – We found out that Madi was going to be a girl and started focusing on girl names. Parrie was, of course, at the top of the list but it just felt too final to decide that was the name. There are far too many names out there to say “that’s IT!” and not waiver. I may be a bit indecisive. Madilyn and all of it’s spelling variations was something we really considered. Especially because we liked the nickname Madi. My problem was that it seemed like there were Madilyn’s being born every single day. The name was just everywhere. And although I didn’t love my very different name when I was younger, I love it now and came to appreciate that I wasn’t one of the many Lisa’s or Jennifer’s that I grew up with. Brad came home from work one day and told me he found the name for our baby. I asked him how he found it and he said a co-worker made it up. Oh great. When he first said it I wasn’t so sure but when I realized I got to make up the spelling I was pretty excited. The paper of the ninety-two spellings I came up with for her name is floating around here somewhere too. No lie. 92. Wow.
3. Chandler – There is a town in Oklahoma with this name which is where I originally saw it. We both liked it but Friend’s was coming out right when it was on our list. I think that’s why it never made it to another short list again. This was our backup in case Madi came out with boy parts. She would have been Chandler Scott Stewart, named after her Daddy Bradley Scott.
4. Heston – Brad loves our girls but I can say that every time I was pregnant he initially hoped for a boy. So when we left the ultrasound after finding out our second baby would be a boy he was seriously walking on air. We grabbed lunch at Wendy’s before going back to work and immediately started throwing around boy names. By the time we finished lunch we decided we would name the baby Heston. Then I realized that we still had months left in our pregnancy and we couldn’t possibly commit to a name yet!
5. Kendall – We really loved this name for a girl and it was our backup girl name for Eli.
6. Abigail – This was our other backup girl name for Eli. We would have called her Abby. Awwww.
7. William Foster – Sadie is the only baby we didn’t find out the gender of. If she had been a boy this would have been her name and we would have called her Foster. William is my Daddy’s name and Foster is my Step-Daddy’s last name and of course her last name would have been the same as Brad’s Daddy. So s/he would have been named after all of the Grandpa’s. Still LOVE this. This is the only name ever that we decided on and I never wanted to waiver from.
8. Georgia – Oh Sadie. For some reason we had her boy named locked in but couldn’t decide on a girl name. We went to the hospital with 3 girl names to decide between. Parrie was of course one of them. Georgia was another one. I LOVE this name. Still do. However, Sadie was going to be our last baby and since Madi and Eli both had nicknames I wanted her to have one too. I was so worried that she’d feel left out. Again, I blame the hormones.
9. Lydia – This was our 3rd option for Sadie. Then she was born and was obviously a girl and we were all of the sudden back at square one. How does that happen?! Brad stayed the night with the other kids at home but before leaving we threw around a million different names. One we both liked a lot was Selah. But the more I said it the more I felt like it sounded like Shiela with a lisp. (Sorry for all you Selah’s out there!) I was leaning towards Zoe and I can’t even remember what Brad liked but we couldn’t come to an agreement. He called me that night while I was in the hospital and suggested the name Sheridan. I didn’t love it at first. And I didn’t like the nickname Sheri, it seemed to “old” for my brand new baby. So somehow my crazy (hormonal brain came up with the nickname Sadie. My thinking was that if Peggy could be a nickname for Margaret or Dick could be a nickname for Richard then we could do whatever we wanted. We actually left the hospital with a baby with no name and within a week settled on Sheradyn. We sort of imagined that her Daddy would always call her that because he preferred it but that didn’t happen. She did go through one full of school using it as her name and it’s really grown on me since that night when Brad first called and suggested it. I love it now. Sheradyn Elayne. Our sweet Sadie bug!
10. Reagan – Had Teagan been a boy she would have been William Foster. Had Brad had his way we would have named her Reagan. I actually really like this name a lot but I just really loved Teagan and he liked it a lot too. If I’d REALLY had my way we would have stuck an H in there. Teaghan. Oh, and since we used a Y in Sadie’s first and middle names I wanted Teaghan Elyse. Brad said I’d spelled enough of the names with y’s and stuck to his guns on the spelling of her name. I guess it was about time he got his way!