When you find out you're having a baby, aside from dreaming about their gender, I normally start thinking about names.
Potential boy names...
Potential girl name...
There are always debates among those whose opinions matter (and those whose don't) as to what we should name our next child. There's even polls and voting that takes place. This time, it was on our chalkboard wall. Lots of entertainment for sure.
The most popular, funny, choice would be to have named our daughter Ginger Ales or our son Stout Ales.
Har de Har Har. Not. :)
Clearly, we would not have chosen either option.
How we came to name our daughter Charleigh Marie was really a round about process.
I've always liked the name Charly, Charley or Charlie for a girl. Growing up, I read Charly by Jack Weyland more times than I can remember. I loved that such a strong girl had a boys name. When I started dating my husband, I learned that his father and grandfather both shared the name Charles or Charlie. I remembered thinking it was pretty cool that they shared the same name as one of my favorite teen books.I used to love going through family history charts looking for unusual but cool names and I've always thought it neat to give our children a family name. As you may know, Freddy is named after Steve's maternal grandfather. Even after going through my family tree's and looking at names, I still could not get the name Charlie out of my mind.
Charlie though, isn't very feminine. I've heard stories of girls who had definite boy names, and them being put onto boys sports teams (despite being registered as a girl), because their name is "boyish" and the organizers thinking that a mistake was made on the paperwork.
I didn't want that to happen to our daughter, and so the search began on how to spell her name. There was Charley, Charlee, Charli, and Charleigh. Though they are all lovely, I really liked Charleigh.
Choosing her middle name though, was quite the task.
Initially, her middle name was going to either be Annette, Ann, or Annabella. Many of the women on both sides of our family have the name "Ann" in their names and it would have been a lovely way to honor them. However, I wasn't 100% confident in any of them and something wasn't sitting completely right with me about it. Clearly, it wasn't sitting with quite a few people because we received more negative feedback about her middle name than anything else I've.
So, Steve and I decided that we weren't going to share what her middle name was definitely going to be, until she was born.
One day, in a conversation with someone I love and wholeheartedly admire, the name of Marie was suggested. My mothers name is Mary Lou, and quite honestly I would NEVER ever name my child Mary or Lou. However, we could totally do Marie, have it be a nod to my mother, and give us an opportunity to honor her. Steve and I both kept it to ourselves, because... really... we didn't care what anyone's opinions about it were at that point. It was going to be her middle name.
And, so that's how we chose to name her Charleigh Marie.
I love her name, and it really does fit her well. I can't wait to see how it fits her as she grows up!
