What's In A Name?

You wanna know what's tricky? Choosing a name for a person. You want to love it. You want him or her to love it. You try and think of any possible way for it to be made fun of. You (or at least I) think of how it will sound for a baby, a teenager, and a grandparent. This is a permanent decision, it needs to be a good one.

Well, for my sweet boy, we found a name we loved a while ago. 

RHETT HODGES 

It's classy. It's southern.  It's not commonly used. The only way to make fun of it is to call him "Rhett Butler", and that's not so bad! Hodges is perfect because it's Cherri's maiden name which makes it Pappa (and nana's) last name. Pappa was the only boy, he had girls, and when he passed away there was no one left (in our immediate family) to pass on that name. I love it. It's the perfect name for a gentleman. 

Now for my sweet girl. She's a tricky one. I've always liked different girl names and could never settle on just one, until I heard it...[CLAIRE]. Can you hear the hallelujah chorus? I did when I said the name out loud. It's stunning. It's timeless. It's perfect. Claire is not so easy to come up with a middle name for. We've bounced around a million: Maryl (nickname for Mary Lou), Avery, Ellis, Layne, Katherine, even Davis. I am dead set on her middle name being a family name, so I was determined to pick one and fall in love. The top contenders were Claire Katherine (the name of my cousin who passed away), Claire Avery (the middle name of Pappa who passed away), or Claire Ellis (a last name from my maternal grandmothers family tree). We juggled and juggled said them together and looked at monograms, and we chose our name. 

CLAIRE AVERY

Ahhh, it's just so sweet! The ONLY thing I don't like about it is that I know several people that have used one of the 2 names. However, we now have 2 perfect names to help us always remember our sweet Pappa! 

We can't wait to meet you, Rhett Hodges or Claire Avery! 

Our family (and eventually everyone else) will find out on Saturday what our little one will be!