What's In A Name?

I was hoping to announce our Baby Girl's name when we announced she was a girl. But due to some indecisiveness on both Brian and my parts, we didn't have it quite figured out at the time of the ultrasound. I've always been the type to share my babies' names. Partly because I really stink at keeping secrets and know that there is no way I could not share for 3 to 4 months! And partly because I love the idea of calling her by her name from the moment it's decided. I feel like I knew Austin better when he was born because we had always called him by his name. It probably sounds silly, but it makes sense to me and that's all that matters.

So today I'm happy to announce that we won't have to go through the next 3 months calling Baby Girl "Baby Girl" anymore. From now on she is McKenna Rose Crowley!

McKenna is a name I've loved since high school. I went to school with an awful, awful girl named Makenna, but I really loved the name. I'm just choosing to ignore how awful she was (Seriously, she was just awful!!) by spelling my daughter's name differently. Makenna/Makena is the Hawaiian version. McKenna is the Gaelic version and since Brian is 1/2 Irish, we like that spelling better.

Also, in the midst of our indecision, we looked up the meanings of the names we were considering and discovered that McKenna means "Son of Kenneth" in Gaelic. Now while she's not a son, it is a fun tie to my family cuz my dad's name is Kenneth. The significance of being linked to my family put us over the edge for the name.

Her middle name, Rose, is in honor of Brian's mom, Grandma Judy. Judy's maiden name is DeRose and we've known for a while that we'd love to use Rose as the middle name because of that! I love that she will carry a little bit of each of our families' heritage with her forever!

Now we just have to wait another 112 days or so to call her McKenna in person!