Mommy Talk #6

Here is this week's installation of mommy talk.

Baby Names on your list...What name did you chose, and why?

For us, picking baby names wasn't very difficult. With both of our kids, I think I thought about it a whole lot more than Todd did! It mattered to him, but it wasn't something he spent hours thinking about like I did.

When we were pregnant the first time, we had narrowed the names down quite a bit before our ultrasound. For a boy, we had picked Josiah Truman. We just love the name Josiah, and we picked it because Josiah was one of the few good kings of Israel in the Old Testament. Truman was Todd's great-grandfather's name, and everyone always says Todd looks like him, so we thought it would be a good fit.

For a girl's name, we had narrowed it down to Emma Rose or Lauren Olivia. Both of those names were chosen just because we liked how they sounded. After the ultrasound showed that we were having a girl, I just felt like she was an "Emma." So I convinced Todd to go with Emma, and the rest is history!

Alright, with the second baby we already had the boy name picked out. We had a more difficult time picking the girl name. I really liked Elanor, Sophia, and Olivia for first names. Todd hated Sophia and Elanor. I told him we could call Elanor, Nora for short, but he hated that even more. Isn't if funny that now that she has a different name, I can't even imagine calling her any of these names! After much discussion, we decided on Ella Olivia. First of all, it was kind of a variation of the names we both liked. Second of all, it was a tribute to both of my grandmothers. My paternal grandmother's name is Ella. My maternal grandmother's middle name was Olivanna. Thus, we got Ella Olivia. It fits her well and I'm so glad we went with it.

And yes, I do realize that my girls have very similar names. And yes, we get them mixed up sometimes. But every parent gets their kids' names mixed up, no matter how similar or different they are. So although many naysayers warned us it was a bad idea to name our children such similar names, we threw all caution to the wind and named our kids what we wanted to name them.