Our daughter's name

Naming a child has to be one of the most difficult things we've had to decide in a long, long time. We wanted her name to have meaning and significance, not just something trendy during the year of her birth. We wanted it to be uncommon, but not weird, unique, but not difficult to say or spell, but more than anything else, I wanted it to be placed so strongly on our hearts that we just knew the name belonged to her.

So much is behind a name and it will be hers forever...we knew it was a HUGE decision and one we did not take lightly. We spent months deciding, but we kept coming back to the first name we started with, the only name we had picked out before we knew she was even a girl.

Our daughter's name is Elyse Christina !

The name Elyse (Pronunciation: a-LEESE) is Hebrew and it means "God's promise" or "promised to God". It even meantmore to us because Mathew means "Gift from God" and now we have a to and a from. The night I had my little breakdown in the car and I promised our little girl to God, her name was sealed on my heart.I pretended to toss other names around and even

toyed with the idea of it being something else and I wanted to make sure Matt liked the name as much as I did, but it was that night in the car that I knew Elyse was to be her name. Her middle name is after Matt's mom who passed away 7 years ago this month. I greatly wish I would have had the opportunity to know her and I even wish it more so for our daughter. I love hearing stories about her and I think Elyse will too. Everything about her sounds amazing and naming our daughter after her is an honor.

We chose to spell it Elyse instead of Elise because we have heard that the spelling Elise, when read quickly, often causes people to read it as Elsie, so using the y was our way of trying to prevent that if possible. We also just both really liked the look of the y, hopefully she will too.

Sunday afternoon my friend Kristin with help from my friend Rachel threw an amazing shower at our house. There were many people I hadn't seen in awhile and don't see nearly enough and it was such a nice time. The numerous gifts and necessities for Elyse are really starting to help me feel a little more prepared and I'm starting to grasp just how close we really are to bringing her home with us.