Planning Ahead

Breakfast: yogurt
Lunch: grilled chicken and vegetables
Mid-afternoon snack: apple
Dinner: romaine and spinach salad w/sauteed onions, grape tomatoes and feta cheese; green tea
Dessert: Kefir smoothie
Exercise: NONE

Braylen and I have been discussing baby names lately. Well, truly, we've discussed names we like since the week we met... But that sounds kinda creepy so I'll lets just stick to recent decisions. Our choices have evolved quite a bit since we first started talking about it, but I think we've finally narrowed it down to four: 2 boy names and 2 girl names (not that we're having four kids, by any means... But this gives us the option to have one of each, two boys, or two girls). Some people say you shouldn't (or that they couldn't) name a baby before you meet them. I tend to disagree. I like to be prepared, and there are just certain names I love no matter what. A majority of the names we chose are family-based, meaning we are naming them after an important family member or friend. That being said, we have some pretty funky names in our family, so we had to go outside of the family pool for a couple of them (no offense to any of our family members).

Naming a kid is hard!

Oh, and I also somewhat regret naming Luke "Luke" because I adore Lucas for a boy's name. That being said, the names we have chosen (for now, and I think for good) are:

Girls:
First-born: Ella Christine. My late-grandmother's name was Ella. I think it's absolutely precious. My prayer is that our baby girl can be half the woman my grandmother was. And that she has red hair, because Grandma would've loved that. =]     Oh, and Christine was chosen because it is my mother's middle name and also my middle name. I have always known my first-born daughter would have "Christine" as a middle name.
Second-born: Olivia Renee. Olivia is one of those unused choices we fell in love with. No one in our family is named Olivia, but if we were to have two girls, Ella and Olivia (Ella and Ollie) is just too precious. Renee was chosen because it is my mother-in-law's middle name. She's been so helpful to us from looking at and buying our first home to getting ready for the wedding... I know she will be just as helpful and loving towards our little girl(s) or boy(s). Oh, and I also hope I can make her a red-headed granddaughter, so she can sing songs about freckles and red hair to her instead of me (kidding... kind of) =].

Boys:
First-born: Owen Paul. Owen is another unused pick. We both love the name, and "Owen and Ella" just sounds perfect, to me. Paul was chosen for two reasons, both very important to Braylen and I: 1) Braylen's speech-language pathologist when he was recovering from his TBI at Jim Thorpe was named Paul. He was such a help and inspiration to Bray, and he's always known he possibly wanted to name a son after him. 2) Paul was my late-grandfather's name and is also my father's middle name... Both strong, protective, respectable men who I know our son(s) could learn so much from.
Second-born: Charlie Gene. Charlie is another name that does not run on either side of our family (although my great-grandfather's and uncle's middle name is Charles). I've always loved the name (from my All Dogs go to Heaven days) and Bray happens to love it, too. Gene was chosen because it is his father's first name and his brother's middle name... Two men I know will be infinitely important to our son(s).

So the possible combinations (since we want to have two children):
Ella and Olivia
Ella and Owen (or Owen and Ella, depending on who comes first)
Owen and Charlie

I am happy with our choices. Who knows, with as many times as they've changed over the past two years, they could change again... But right now, this is the happy consensus. Now school just needs to hurry up and finish so we can actually have a baby to name.

Note: I wrote this post because we finished the discussion today, on what was otherwise a pretty awful and tiring day for both of us. It was the bright spot in a long stretch of blah. So I thought I would share it with you guys!


Note2: Feel free to think I'm bonkers for planning this far ahead. Doesn't bother me in the least. 


'Night y'all!