Tuesday, April 21, 2015

What's In A Name


I decided to link up with another blog today about names- Andrea at Momfessionals.  Since I've been in such a blogging rut I thought some topic ideas would be fun.  Also, we aren't getting chickens for the county fair so that will cut my story opportunites way down this spring.  There was some sort of ordering snafu with the chicks this year thanks to the bird flu.  Jay gave Cade's to another kid so we are going to sit this one out.  My electric budget says THANK YOU! 
I don’t know if I’ve every talked about how we came up with our kids names on the blog.  Maybe they’d like to read this someday….or maybe not.  I’m sure reading their mother’s ramblings will be high on their priority list.  But at least it will be recorded somewhere they can read it if they want to. 

Cade Ewing Shepherd

My sister is actually the first person to mention the name Cade to us.  One Sunday afternoon in the fall of 2001, when I was barely pregnant, Charity was at our house.  We were reading baby name books and she mentioned Cade.  It was different and I kind of liked it.  Jay said no.  We talked about other names for the next few months.  By December I was already thinking of him as Cade.  I just knew that was what his name was supposed to be. I just had to convince Jay.   I had already picked out Ewing long before I was pregnant.  It is my mom’s maiden name and my grandpa was the last Ewing from his family.  Since he only had my mom there was no boy to carry on the Ewing name.  Since Cade was going to be the first boy born in the family I wanted him to carry on the name.  By January I had started dropping little hints here and there to Jay about naming him Cade Ewing.  One Saturday I spent the day with my parents and I tried the name out on them to get their feelings.  I didn’t commit to it, I threw it out there with some others.  The reviews were mixed.  I told Jay about it the next day.  The next thing I know he is one the phone with his parents telling him we were naming the baby Cade Ewing .  After he got off the phone I told him I hadn’t actually told my parents.  He just said “oh, I thought you had.  Oh Well.”  About 6 weeks later Cade Ewing Shepherd made his appearance.  I still love his name as much as I did then.

George Ewing holding his Great-Grandson Cade Ewing for the first time
 
 
Camryn Lee Shepherd

As everyone knows, everything with Camryn was different.  Instead of 9 months to plan for a name we had six years, but of course we never wanted to talk about names during that time.  It was too painful.  And even if we did talk names it was boy names.  Never, ever did I think we would have a girl.  It’s also different naming an adopted child.  Do you keep their original name?  Do you incorporate it?  We had always thought that we would take their birth name and somehow incorporate it into the name we would give them.    Once we knew we were chosen and the baby was supposed to be a girl then we talked about it a little bit.  Then contact with Camryn’s birthmom stopped and we were sure it was all over again.  We stopped talking names again and didn’t talk about them again until we were on our way to the hospital to meet our baby.  I didn’t even tell my family we were supposed to be meeting a baby girl on Friday, June 3, 2011 until that morning.  I asked Charity to send me a list of C names that she liked.  I had been thinking about names off and on for a few days but never spoke them out loud.  I had always liked Collins, from the Blindside.  For some reason Collins Elizabeth kept coming to mind but I never voiced it.  Jay likes to use at least one family name and Elizabeth wasn’t in either family.  I just dismissed it.  The other name I liked was Camryn.  We had decided years ago that we could use Lee as a middle name because that was Jay’s grandma’s maiden name.  Camryn Lee went well together.  When I got my sisters list of C names Camryn was on there.  I felt like that was the one since she had also helped me pick out Cade’s name.  When we laid our eyes on Camryn we knew she was our girl.   We waited to make a decision about her name until we knew if her birthparents had named her.  As far as anyone knew she was not named.  Even at the TPR hearing she was called Baby Girl.    Six months later, at her finalization, we found out that she had been named…and her middle name was Elizabeth.  I always think that God knew she was Camryn Lee.  If we had known her middle name was already Elizabeth she would’ve been named Collins Elizabeth.  She was clearly supposed to be Camryn Lee Shepherd.  The baby girl who healed my broken heart and completed our family. 

 Our first family of 4 picture

 And because I do like picking out names I have a couple on reserve.  Not that I have any plans to use them.  Not at all.  But it’s nice to have some backups in case they are needed.  I like to aggravate Jay at times and ask him what would we do if the agency called and said they had a full sibling of Camryn’s.  It’s been known to happen at our agency.  He just rolls his eyes and tells me to be quiet!   Maybe I can suggest my back up names to Camryn or my daughter-in-law someday.  I’m sure they would love that! J   

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