Baby A & Baby B Have Names!!!

So, I've decided that naming your children is a very difficult process in the whole having babies saga.  I personally think that names are important.  Some people name their children strictly from names that they like.  That's fine!  Some people name their children names that having meaning, such as "warrior" or "gift from God" or "pretty flower".  That's also fine.  I happen to think that family names are important and I really don't know why. I know that I remember hearing my Mom talk about naming my brother, Will, and my sister, Maggie.  I remember hearing her talk about finding out family names and all 4 of us have some type of family name.  I happen to have all family names and I think Will does, too!    I asked Sid's mom about his name and she was one of those that used names she just liked.  Nothing in the world wrong with that at all! 

It was soo very hard for us to come up with Bailey's name.  We had about decided on Anne Marie, with Anne being my middle name and my Granny Wilson's middle name; Marie being my Mom's middle name.  But then my dad mentioned that his Great Great Great Great Grandfather's name was John Bailey and he wished he had thought about that with one of us.  Bailey just sort of stuck with both of us and it is the PERFECT name for her.  It just fits her little personality so much.

When we found out it was twins, I immediately started trying to come up with twin names.  We always knew our boy name would be John Thomas.  Sid's grandfather's name was John Roy and Thomas would be after my dad, grandfather, and brother.  Then we decided we like boy names with Ben in them, like Benton, Bentley, Bennett, which would be after Sid's other grandfather, Bennie.  When we found out it was two girls, I thought for sure we'd never come up with two girl names.  It just seemed like we could always agree more on boy names than girl names.  Sid didn't like "ben" names for girls.  I liked Sidney and Anne as middle names for the girls after us, but he didn't.  We still liked Anne Marie, but Maggie had sort of claimed that name after we didn't use it, plus we couldn't come up with another girl name that sort of matched it.

Having two girls names that matched but weren't the same was also important to me.  I didn't want them to have two totally different, unrelated names, but I also didn't want them to be something that sounded almost exactly alike. We kept kicking names around, and wrote down all the family names we could think of that we would like to use.  But we still couldn't come up with anything that we both liked. 

One day, I got an email from Dad telling me about some research he had done on car seats and double strollers.  (By the way Poppy T, we never got those! haha!)  In the email, he referred to the girls by names, names that he had come up with.  And from those two names, the names of our Baby A and Baby B were born. 

One name was Eliza.  Sid's grandmother's name is Elizabeth and I had blogged about this so I'm assuming that's where he came up with it.  The other name was not spelled this way and I don't really remember how he spelled it in the email, I just remember it taking a few back and forth conversations before I got it right based on how he had spelled it. 

So, what are they????

I just realized that we haven't discussed which baby will get which name.  So I can't tell you exactly what Baby A's name is and exactly what Baby B's name is.  But I can tell you the two names.  We have decided to go with

Elissa Marie

and

Ellie Jane.

Sid's grandmother's names are Elizabeth and Odessa.  Elissa is a combo of the first part of the Elizabeth and the last part of Odessa.  Marie is my mother's middle name.  Ellie, pronounced L E, is just a name we liked that Dad came up with.  Jane is my Mammaw's middle name.  The only two names that we were not able to use were my Granny Wilson's name, which is Margaret Anne, and Sid's mom's name, which is Wanniese.  She only has one name.  Maggie has Granny Wilson's first name and I have her middle name.  Maggie will also use Anne if she keeps the name Anne Marie.  And we justified not using Wanniese because the girl's will share a last name with her!

There you have it!  Elissa Marie and Ellie Jane! I was in the car passing Sid's grandmother's house and thinking of the names that Dad had emailed.  Elissa just hit me and I called Sid and he agreed to Elissa and Ellie.  After we hung up, I sort of teared up and I knew that we had settled on the right names.  I hope when they are old enough to appreciate their names that they don't ask we named them what we named them.  haha! 

In case you don't know, here are the names of all three girl's:
Bailey Ellen
Elissa Marie
Ellie Jane 

Can you picture our Christmas card signature for next year?  I can't!  It is unbelievable to think that we are growing from a family of 3 to a family of 5.  And it is very scary.  But we are excited with what the future holds with our sweet princesses!!!!