Naming Baby

Coming up with a name was so much more difficult for us this time, for whatever reason! We finally finalized our decisions over dinner at 38 weeks (and I made shirts to make them official):

The shirt was a bit snug on my big girl. :)

 #size0to3months #thinkagain 

Enough pictures, already! Feed me, woman!

The final decision was: Crosby Pete for a boy or Lenore Elaine for a girl.

Lenore Elaine
I've liked Lenore since we were pregnant with Lewis. I've seen it as Lenore, Leonore, Lenora, Elenore, Eleanora, etc. but I just like plain ol' Lenore.

• Meaning is 'Like a Lion' or 'Light, Torch, Bright.'
• I didn't initially realize it, but it's a form of Leona, which was my great-grandmother Webb's name.
• I don't know about a nickname, yet. I've heard Nori, but I don't think I can nickname my child the same as Kim Kardashian. :) I'd liked Leni years ago, but I've since gone away from that (and Kevin is very anti-Leni, so that was part of our agreement). :) I think we'll just stick with Lenore for now.
• We like how that it starts with an L, to go along with Lewis: Lewis and Lenore.

Elaine was Kevin's suggestion--he really likes Julia Louis Dreyfus, especially as Elaine Benes on Seinfeld. It was a first name contender for a while, but we decided to use it as a middle instead. And, an added reason, if you take the letters of my sister's name (Emily Diane) and put them in a letter blender, it kind of makes the name, Elaine. :)

Crosby Pete
Kevin is the one who suggested Crosby, and we both liked it for a number of reasons, even more so as time went on and we thought more about it.

• Meaning is 'Dweller by the town crossing.'
• Crosby Braverman (Dax Shepherd) from Parenthood, one of our favorite shows.
• Bing Crosby is in White Christmas, which is one of my (and my mom's and maybe my sister's?) favorite movies. I watch it every year as I put up the Christmas tree. My sister and I once did the Haynes' sisters' Sisters routine in a high school choir performance (because we are awesome). We go way back. :)
• Songs of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young have been with me, growing up, and with us, throughout our relationship. 
• Our House and Teach Your Children remind me of my childhood, hearing my parents sing around the house.
• Suite: Judy Blue Eyes is just a great song. 
• Kevin really likes Southern Cross.
• One of the absolute most fun days of my life was back in the summer of 2003 at Taste of Bloomington with Kevin and my sister and a friend, eating good food, drinking good beer, and dancing the conga line to Love the One You're With (covered by the band Bahama Llama). [Kevin would like to note that it's technically just a Stephen Stills song, not CSN/Y, but we still associate it with CSN/Y.]
• David Crosby has 'most awesome' hair, and given the crazy waves/curls between Kevin and I, we figure this child is bound to have some awesome hair, too.
• We like that it's two syllables, like Lewis, and we like the shortened version, Cros: Lew and Cros.

We went with Pete because, why not? We thought of using many other names and really went through the ringer with them, but we ultimately decided that Lewis Pete and Crosby Pete sounded right to us. Waycross (the source of the Jim Peters' story and Peter's namesake) is what brought us together, so we decided to just go with it.


So those are/were our names! I really, truly thought it was going to be a boy, based on how the pregnancy felt compared to Lewis' (very similar), but I had started to feel a greater connection to the name, Lenore, towards the end (and I told a few people that in the days leading up to the baby's arrival).