What's in a Name?

The Tan Man!

Our amazing friends have brought us dinners on nights when family has not been in town.  Casey has also been helping Jonathan with a lot of the lawn equipment we've needed to get the outside of our house in shape, and Connor enjoyed getting to see Tanner for a few minutes!

Blurry-but cuties!

Sweet girl...I took the pics in this post 

right when she turned 3 weeks.

Connor was cracking me up last week.  I opened a package of plates and let him play with them before washing them for the first time.  I couldn't see him for a minute and when I came around the corner, each plate was flipped upside down like a pedestal for his sesame street characters - Elmo, Ernie, and Bert were each on one plate.  Next thing I know, his wheelies were each on a plate and the characters were laying in front...what do you think happened here?  They got bulldozed?  Man oh man...

We pulled the activity mat out for the first time and Con was instructing Annalee on how to play the piano and get all the toys.  Not surprisingly, she kicks (and plays) the piano like its nothing and bats away at the toys (she was a fast/fluttery mover all through pregnancy and scooches all over when I lay her down now!).

I wanted to write a little bit about her name - we've been asked about it a lot!

My maternal grandmother and BOTH of Jonathan's grandmothers have the first name "Ann".  My middle name is "Caffrey", my grandma's (Ann's) maiden name, so I have always wanted to use "Ann" or even "Caffrey" in a name for a daughter.  Jonathan's paternal grandmother was Ann Veronica and went by "Ronnie", but his maternal grandmother and mine always went simply by "Ann", so we were settled on that for at least part of her name!

My paternal grandmother was named Virginia.  We thought that would be wonderful to use as a middle name, and then all four of our grandmothers would be included in the name.  We also love the that it connects to where we lived for the first part of our married life. :)

So, we didn't stop at Ann.  There were a lot of reasons for that, but let's say simply that I preferred a longer name, and we narrowed it to two.  This was before Connor was born...remember, we didn't know if he was a boy or a girl!  One of the names we had narrowed it down to was then used by a few friends and seemed to become more popular in the 18 months between Connor and baby girl.  So we settled on the other - Annalee.

What we love the most is that every part of her name comes from our families and loved ones.  "Lee" is a family name in Jonathan's family.  The last name of some ancestors, it was used as a first name for Jonathan's Great Uncle Lee, then the middle name of Jonathan's father (Daniel Lee), and now as part of our sweet girl's name!

So there you have it!  Yes, a long 6 syllables and I love every bit of it.  Yes, we plan to call her "Annalee" all the time.  Yes, we know others may shorten it and she may want to go by "Ann" or "Anna" or who knows what else, and that is okay!  Yes, I already call her nick names like "Littles" (and call Connor "Bigs") and lengthen her name to ridiculous things like "Annaleebee".

One thing we know for sure?  We love you, Annalee Virginia!  Beautiful girl with a beautiful name!