Naming a baby

I don't think I've ever told the story of how we chose Chloe's name, and now seems like a great time to do that. I'm convinced she's in on choosing her first name. Bill and I somewhat half heartedly had thrown names around the first few months of my pregnancy, but nothing was sounding right. We didn't have any names we both liked. I can't remember exactly when it happened, maybe sometime in January, but one day I woke up with the name Chloe bouncing around my head. It was kind of like a bell rang in my head and I just knew that was her name. It felt so certain to me that I hesitated to tell Bill in case he didn't feel the same way. We went out on a date for our anniversary a day or two later and I told him I had a name but I was hesitant to share it, lest he shoot it down. I really shouldn't have worried. Bill totally isn't like that, but whatever. Anyway, to my surprise not only did he not shoot down the name, but he loved it. We basically just looked at each other, marveling.

So we had her first name, but her middle name was another story. We spent the next probably four months throwing names around to no effect. In the past we've used family names for middle names, but this time that didn't work out as well. I love both my mom and mother-in-law, but neither of their names worked as a middle name very well, and I didn't want to use just one and not the other since she's our last baby. My other kids are middle named after Bill and I and then my dad.

I finally decided I wanted to find a name that had a meaning that was special to me. I started searching around and still didn't find a lot, but kept at it. We actually decided on the name Chloe before we knew for sure she was a girl. I had always thought we would have a boy, a girl, and two boys. That's a different story, but I felt like Chloe was a girl pretty much from the day I found out I was pregnant, which was both very surprising and very exciting for me. Another boy would have been great, but having a girl was unexpected and a lovely surprise. It balances our family out and just made me very happy. So my searches for names that had meaning centered around all sorts of positive words like happiness and joy and such. I actually found the name Anabel a few months ago and Bill didn't hate it, but didn't love it either. We threw out quite a few other names and nothing else clicked, so we decided basically that unless something else came to us, that would be it. And nothing else came, so there you go, Chloe Anabel, our sweet surprise of a girl. She's a wonderful addition to our family, completing it and bringing that special feeling into our house that comes from a new little one.