Ellie

(Note: Drew woke up at 5:15 screaming.  I got him back down about 5:30, but was planning to get up at 6 to get some things done, and never fell back asleep.  Thus, I have been up since 5:15.  It is now 7:40 and everyone else in this house (including the dog) is still in bed asleep.  Figures.)

(Note 2: I think I promised a post about her name and how we came to it.  I think I also promised a post about Halloween, Christmas, and about 15 other things in between.  I might get to those.  And no, blogging more frequently is NOT one of my new year's resolutions.)

Maybe it's just us, but picking out a girl's name proved to be much harder than a boy's.  Girls seem to have more "genres" than boys- the older names (Olivia), the new names (Kynleigh), the names that used to be last names (Ryder), the names that used to be boys names (Taylor), the names that were previously nicknames but are now just stand alone first names (Maddie).  Not to  mention that there are like 30 spellings for all of these.  Not easy.

We narrowed it down to three- all of which I both liked and had some reservations with.  One of which was "Annalise."  I really liked it because it wasn't a new, made-up name, but also was NOT common.  The drawback was Rob wanted call her Ellie.  And I said no.  Because do you see Ellie in "Annalise?"  Me neither. 

But some research said that the traditional German spelling of the now-Americanized "Annalise" was Anneliese.  Anneliese.  And that Ellie WAS a nickname for Anneliese.  So I got on board with the Ellie nickname and he got on board with the traditional spelling, and we continued throwing that name around.  Every so often one of us would throw another name into the ring and it was always met with "I don't like that as much as Anneliese."  So on December 23rd, we shook on it.  Anneliese.  Ellie.

Corrinne was much easier for us.  Drew's middle name is Edward, a family name of just about everyone on Rob's side of the family (including Rob).  We really wanted to use a family middle name for her as well.  But it had to be unique to hold up against Anneliese.  Corrinne is my grandmother's middle name, and my great grandmother's first name.  It seemed like a natural fit of unique name and family heritage.

So my girl will have a German first name, French middle name, and Italian last name.  And a distinctly American nickname.  I think I'll make her study abroad. :)