Our Baby Names

Disclaimer: these names are not 100% set in stone but pretty close so hold any nasty comments :)

I'll never forget the day Brian and I worked on picking out baby names. We were living in the condo and sort of made a game out of it. You know the road trip game when you go through the alphabet and have to come up with a different name for each letter? Yeah, that's what we did to get our initial lists of boy and girl names.

I know, you're cringing. What about family names? What about the meaning behind the name?

I totally agree with you; I LOVE using family names. I'm always jealous when there are beautiful maiden names to be passed down, ie. PAGE. Which everyone thinks is spelled incorrectly... dumb asses.

The tough thing is it's hard to pass down a first name as your kid's first name. There would be a "Big Andrew", "Little Andrew" situation (can you tell I wanted to name my kid Andrew?).  Also, Brian was not nuts about any family first names. I loved Edward for a boy after my grandfather. I truly believe if you name your kid after someone, it should be someone you genuinely would like them to resemble. He wasn't nuts about having a kid we called "Eddie", and he's the dad so he can veto whatever he isn't loving.

So here's how we're passing down our family names:

- Brian's family name will be with our kid(s) automatically as he/she/they will have his last name 

- I'm passing Godfrey down as a middle name if it's a boy (I love this as a first name but Brian was worried people would call the kid "God", and I totally get how that would be weird)

- I'm passing Glenn down as a middle name if it's a girl (hope my dad is happy we passed down his name and doesn't mind if it's to a girl)

So the first names were all up to us; we'd checked off the kid getting family names from both of us.

For a boy, we still passed down a name, and it's a name we both really love: Patrick

Patrick is Brian's middle name. It's a very handsome name, and I love that it's an extra little piece of Brian that our son would get to carry with him.

For a girl, we have our controversial and less popular name: Hartley

People may think this name is made up but surprise, it's not. It's actually an Enlish boy's name that was popular centuries ago. When I saw it, I fell in love with it for a girl. I recently asked Brian is we should change it due to most people not loving it, and he said no, which surprised me. That he has started thinking of our daughter as Hartley. My little Hart.

So that means the names we have picked (that we likely won't be changing) are:

Patrick Godfrey Crane

Hartley Glenn Crane

And when I write them out, I love them even more. Though I think this baby is a boy, I love Hartley as a February girl's name. I already have her 1st birthday party all planned out! And if it's a boy, I think it'd be fun if his 21st birthday was green beer, St.Patty's theme. I can already see the "ugh, Mommmmm" eye roll now.

Well off to do some baby book reading or registering... what ever it is us 13 weeks pregnant women do...