It's Adelyn, not Tadelyn, Madelyn or Abilyn

It's a lot of pressure to name a baby. It was something that Brian & I took very seriously. We each would throw out names and if the other could think of a terrible nickname or something bad then the name was out. Back in the spring one of the characters in a book I was reading was named was Adeline (like Caroline), I kind of liked the sound of that & added it to the list. Brian really liked the name Addison, but I couldn't get past the Grey's Anatomy character. We had one of those baby name books and found the name Adelyn which was a nice mix of names we both liked. It is a German word meaning "noble kind". We added it to our list.
After a couple more months the only name we kept coming back to was Adelyn and pretty soon that's what we were calling her to each other. By the summer we knew for sure that would be her name & we just had to decide on a middle name. My middle name is Lynn, as is both my Mom and Dad's. Since she would already have Lynn in her first name we couldn't use that. I really liked Ruby which is the name of my only living grandparent; my Dad's 92-year-old mother, who happens to share her birthday with our wedding anniversary. We thought it would be cool if we had our daughter on our anniversary & on her great-grandma's birthday (which she was only off by 1 day!). My Grandma also happens to be incredibly smart, kind, loving, honest & funny. I figured if any of her traits were to be passed onto Adelyn it would be a good thing.
After she was born I called my Dad with the news, it took him about 5 tries to get the name right (his hearing isn't that great). He thought I said Madelyn, Eleanor, Addison, finally he got Adelyn. Then I got a funny email from my brother Tad saying "naming a beautiful newborn after someone is certainly the greatest form of flattery and I think that you could not have made a better decision. Honestly, Megan you and I have been very close through out the years, but I really never expected the admiration that you have shown by naming little baby Tadelyn Ruby after me." Nice try but not so much. Then my niece Sydney came to visit and kept referring to her as Abilyn. We finally had to make a rhyme to help her remember it was Adelyn.
So for any of you who are struggling with our little girl's name, I have a very easy solution for you, a name you can't mispronounce. It's Addy & you can always call her that. Here is a pic of Addy with her oldest cousin Sydney.

So Long Rainshadow

As soon as we found out we were pregnant we started getting a lot of advice from other parents. The most common piece of advice we got was to not share the name until the baby was born. Everyone said you end up getting all kinds of feedback that you aren't looking for. People can't help but share that they once knew someone with that name that they didn't like, or offer up some negative nickname that could be associated with a particular name. So we took that advice, and before we even knew what we were going to name our child, we agreed not to tell anyone, and believe it or not we didn't.

Of course this wasn't easy, especially for my family. It drove them crazy that we weren't sharing. My Dad must have tried a hundred different times to get the name out of us. It was hard for us too and of course we needed something to refer to her as when we were with other people. So after yet another inquiry from my Dad on what her name would be, we told him we were going to name her Rainshadow. The name stuck and for several months we referred to her as Rainshadow to our family, friends and coworkers. Most conversations would start with "how is Rainshadow doing today?" or "what did you learn about Rainshadow from the Dr. today?" It was a perfectly ridiculous name for our little girl & it helped us keep her name a secret. I am definitely glad that the secret is out, but I must admit I am a little sad to know that Rainshadow is now gone forever. Thanks Rainshadow, we'll miss you.

Picture Perfect

Before she was even 24 hours old, our little Addy had already had two photo shoots. One from the professional photographer at the hospital & one from our semi-professional photographer friend Sarah. Here are a few of our favorites from Sarah. (thank you!!)

An Anniversary to Remember

Brian and I celebrated our two year anniversary on Tuesday, October 27th. It was an unusual anniversary since I was 5 days overdue and filled with anxiety about possibly being induced the following evening. We had a nice dinner at home and agreed to not finalize our inducement plans until the following morning. I needed a night to sleep on it and my plan was to just go into labor by the following day so I didn't have to decide (I'm always the optimist). After dinner I remembered that we had an "Anniversary Book" which you are supposed to fill out memorable moments from the last year and include a picture from that year. I summarized our year and then looked through our photos for one to add but couldn't find one that was good, so we decided to set up our camera and take a photo on our actual anniversary. I wasn't thrilled about being photographed at 41 weeks, but oh well. Here is one of the photos taken at 9:30 pm.



We got ready for bed shortly after and wouldn't you know around 10:30 pm I started to feel crampy and uncomfortable. I was hoping and praying it was labor but I didn't want to jinx it so I just laid in bed trying to will contractions to start. An hour later I was still feeling weird and it was getting worse. I got up and walked around and searched through all of my pregnancy books to read up on labor & how to determine it if was real or not. So far all signs pointed to the real thing. I didn't want to wake up Brian for nothing so I continued this for another couple hours until the contractions were about 4 minutes apart and 40 seconds long. Finally by about 1:00 am I couldn't do it by myself so I woke up Brian very gently with a huge smile and said "Honey, I'm in labor and am having contractions". It took him a moment to really wake up and then he jumped into action. We found a watch and started timing things for real. We called the Dr. around 2:00 am and were told if this pattern continued for another hour or two we could make our way into the hospital. The contractions never slowed down and only got stronger so a little after 4:00 am we made our way in. I checked into triage and got checked and was told I was not progressed far enough to be checked in so I could either go home (a completely inconceivable idea) or walk around the hospital until things progressed further. We chose to walk around and found an empty stairwell where I just walked up and down and struggled through contractions. I got checked again a few hours later and luckily had progressed enough to get checked into the birthing room. After several more hours of the worst pain I've ever experienced I asked for an epidural, once I got it I went from one extreme to another and felt a wave of euphoria I had never experienced before. At one point I told Brian if we happened to have a boy instead we would name him after the "Epidural Man" who I had just declared my new best friend. After the epidural, which was about 15 hours after my first contraction, I was actually able to fall asleep for the first time in 30 plus hours and when I woke up I was told it was almost time to push.

I couldn't believe I was so close to having this baby I had waited months and months for. After 45 minutes of pushing, at 3:04 pm, I heard her cry and felt more love than I have ever felt in my life. We had our little girl, Adelyn Ruby Evert, who was actually not so little at 8 lbs 6.5 oz's and 21 inches. In less than 24 hours our family photo was changed forever and the two of us became three. It was worth every painful contraction and every minute of waiting to see her and kiss her. I immediately knew what every other parent had told me about the emotions you feel on the birth of your child. It truly is the most amazing thing I have ever experienced and we couldn't be happier about our little angel Adelyn.