Before I had kids, before I was even married actually, I had the "perfect" names picked out for my future children. I had my list of boys' names and girls' names. And I was certain that those would be THE names.
Then I got married. And I actually started having children for real. And I had to start considering something other than just how cute a name sounded. Did anyone ever watch the show "Hey, Dude" when they were younger? I did. And one of the main characters (a girl) was named Brad. I loved it and was so certain that when I had a daughter of my own someday, I would name her Brad.
My, how things change over time!
Many of you know that Kris and I have a very hard time agreeing on names. Thankfully, it was easy with Caleb. Once we knew we were having a boy, we agreed that his name would be one of two options. After some honest opinions from my family, we decided against option #1 and went with Caleb! And that was it. Easy. We loved the name Caleb. It is a Hebrew name, meaning faithful and brave. His middle name is Kristopher (after Daddy of course), which means bearer of Christ, or follower of Christ.
Caleb Kristopher - faithful and brave follower of Christ
Then came Baby #2. Once we found out that she was a girl, we were on the hunt for the perfect girl's name. I came up with the perfect list. =) I had a handful of girls' names that I just loved. And of course Kris was going to agree, right? Wrong! That started a very long process for us...we could not agree on anything! I was dead set on 2 names. I loved them. The only problem was that my husband (who was just as much a parent to this baby as I was!) did NOT love them. In fact, he didn't even like them very much! So, after a lot of trying to change one another's mind,
we realized that we needed to go back to square one. Open up that baby book and search. We did that, and came up with a new list of names that we "agreed on". And, while Kris allowed those 2 names that I loved to still be on the list, I knew he wasn't going to change his mind. Eventually, those names had to go and we were left with a few that we agreed on, but didn't necessarily love. Meredith was on that list, along with a couple of others. Obviously, we finally settled on Meredith, and while it was not originally my 1st choice, I can't imagine my little girl being named anything else! I now love her name, and she is definitely a Meredith. While we were unable to find a great meaning for her name, our church told us that Meredith means Blessed by God. Her middle name is Grace.
Meredith Grace - blessed by God's grace
Fast forward to the next pregnancy. This one. I think that if we found out that this baby was a girl, we would be set. We still had a couple of names from last time around that we would have strongly considered using for this next baby. But, as you know, we are not having a girl! So, those names were not acceptable. Back to the drawing board. Once again, I made a list. And Kris had a list. Somehow, these names did not match. Surprise, surprise. About a month ago, I actually started to become concerned that we might not come to any agreement. And, while I know we still have plenty of weeks to go, I was eager to give our little boy his name. Last week, we sat down and went through the baby book again. We spent 2 hours looking through names. Laughing at many of the options, but considering others. We ended up putting 8 names on the list. 8 names that we both agreed on. Although, we still each had "favorites" from that list and those favorites did not necessarily mesh!
So here we are. We have spent some more time narrowing down the list, and we officially have 3 names left. Out of those 3, Kris has a favorite and I have a favorite. But we have concluded that we would both be happy with any of the 3 names. We like how they sound, and they all mean something wonderful. And, coincidentally, they all have the same number of letters, which I think is pretty funny! Anyway, while we haven't yet officially decided, I am so excited to be closer to giving our precious boy his name! Hooray!
Oh, and in case you are wondering, we are planning to keep his name a secret until he is born. =)
