My friend Emily did this really amazing blog about how her and her husband came to naming their children. I thought this was a really fantastic idea so I'm stealing her idea and doing it too.
This part of becoming a parent and being given the responsibility of naming your children is one of the most fun things but can also be a pretty intense process. You kind of start out by throwing around names that you like. Being married to a teacher presents a bigger challenged because if there is a student that he did not like or that gave him a hard time, that name was immediately removed from the list. When we found out we were having twins, there were so many possibilities, 2 boys, 2 girls, or a boy and a girl. We never came up with 2 boys names, in fact, boys names were the hardest for us. If they would have been 2 girls it would have been Emma and Elizabeth. Emma, just because we really loved the name and Elizabeth is after my momma and me and it means "consecrated to God" . Her middle name is Jeanne after my beautiful mother in law. We want to put the two most important women in our lives together in the name of our first daughter. A student actually gave Jeremy the suggestion of Elijah. The first time I heard it, I fell in love. His name means " the Lord is my God". His middle name is Sandor after my dad.
When we found out we were pregnant with Joshua, we just knew he was a boy but as soon as it was confirmed I told Jeremy that I wanted to name him after his brother who is in the arms of Jesus. The name is so beautiful and so powerful. It means "Jehovah saves". Jeremy struggled with it a little and asked that I give him some time to think about it. On mothers day, he gave me a card from Elijah, Elizabeth, and Joshua. It was the best mothers day gift EVER. It was a very precious moment when we asked mom and dad (Perkowski) for permission to name him after their sweet son. His middle name is Vincent after his amazing Dza Dza.
With all of our children, we knew confidently what their names would be before they were born, except with our last little angel. We first struggled with names. I loved Gracie Mae(after my aunt Judy Mae) and we loved Olivia Marie(after my cousin Teresa) or Olivia Rose(after Jeremy's grandma and aunt Bonnie and cousin Michelle.) Then towards the end of our pregnancy we threw Juliet in there as well. We even asked family for their input and to give us some help with the middle name. Mom and Aunt Lori gave us the suggestion of Lynn which I loved very much. Terry calls Linda, "Lin" and so we thought it would be great to use that spelling and that way our moms names where a part of both of our girls. But Jeremy claimed this naming for his own since I picked Joshua. He told me that he would have to see her first to know which name suited her most. It was between Olivia Rose and Juliet Lin. After the surgery, Jeremy came into the room and told me she was definitely a little Juliet Lin.
