Friday, February 17, 2012

welcome home, madelynn (and how we named you)!!

your room is all ready for you, maddy!
after maddy was born, we sent out messages to our friends that said, it's a girl!, but didn't reveal maddy's name for a while.  first, we were CONVINCED we were having a boy, so we didn't really decide on (or even really discuss!!) girl names.  pete left girl names up to me, like he didn't have an opinion at all really, until we had a girl.  then we needed to start figuring it out!!  we decided on mad-something (i'd been tossing around a slew of names: emiline, madeline, molly, emily, a few others) and had settled on an M name.  i thought it needed to be a name that could be shortened, ex: jennifer=jen or jenny, peter=pete, jackson=jack, to fit into our family dynamic.  most people think if you're going to shorten a name, why not go with it in the first place?  i like to go long, then shorten.

it was either madelynn or madeline, then it was definitely madelynn, but we had to talk through a gazillion spellings before i convinced pete that this way: madelynn was pronounced the way we wanted it to be.

so now for the shortened version, since that's the name we go by most of the time... we had mixed feelings on maddy v. maddie.  we ended up liking the 'y' and i ended up being happy that her junior high years wouldn't consist of hearts over the 'i' in her name.

i'm jennifer lynn, jenny for short (when i'm not going by jen, which is all the time since junior high, but my parents and their friends may slip, my siblings definitely use 'jenny' and laura actually calls me 'aunt jenny' when speaking to baby dino, and leslie also calls me jenny), so it was logical in MY mind that her name have to 'n's' like the lynn of my name and the 'y' follow suit nicely (mommy's little girl).

lastly, i really wanted to name my daughter meg, but couldn't find a longer name that shortened to meg that i liked.  sooooo, once i was sure we'd have an M name, i immediately wanted elizabeth to be the middle name (i don't know why, i've always liked it, but didn't love how it's shortened in so many different ways, so it was out as a first name).  then her initials would be M.E.G. (meg!).  les and i decided it was something she could go by in college or high school, like a cool-close-friends kind of nickname.

we sent the birth certificate person out of the room twice before we really finalized everything :).  THEN we could go home!
the second time around was much easier than with jack!  we didn't really know how to  work the car seat and the poor guy was totally smashed in there!  doesn't she look little?
i bought two premie outfits (one pink, one blue)
she was so long, her feet stuck out... and i forgot socks!
luckily i had a white blanket!



jack and gran had cleaned our house, stocked our fridge with dinner, and decorated for us!
a pink balloon on the mailbox
our neighbors were SO in to finding out what we had!
i think this is maddy in the car...
protective brother!
welcome baby girl green!
a couple days later, comforting maddy while she rested in her moses basket.

4 comments:

Leslie said...

being so far away this time around and not able to crash your hospital room like with jack, i like to think i was at least super involved in the naming process. it's so nice to see i actually was!

tricia said...

i LOVE the story of how you named her!

devon lorraine ... said...

a good friend of mine from high school had her first baby, gosh, over six years ago. i had suggested madeleine as one of my faves, and also told my friend that if she named her baby that and if i EVER had a child, we might end up with kids who had the same name.

and she ended up naming her madelyn!

well i guess i ended up with a piper, which solved for the possible 'same name' thing! point is, you sure did pick a pretty name for your pretty girl! knew right away that some of the spelling had to do with miss jenny lynn!


(ps like you, i also love the name meg)

Tara Vorhes said...

Congratulations!!! What an absolutely beautiful little lady. Love the name.