I'm obsessed with y's, deal with it!

Hi Dear Readers!  I've missed you, and I've been craving catching up all your blogs.  I'll be off to read and comment after posting this entry.  Being on vacay (whoot!)  I missed both TAT @ Growing up Geeky and PYHO @ Things I can't Say this week, so in honor of both of my bloggy friends and their weekly series, I bring you my naming PYHO.  I like Y's...so deal with it.

Naming a child is a very stressful endeavor...to say the least. For us, there were very simple rules to follow:

1. We had to both like it.
2. It couldn't remind me of any annoying or bad student (which can be difficult as an educator)
3. There had to be a family name in there somewhere.
4. It couldn't remind hubs of anyone he didn't like (which seemed to happen a lot...mind you)
5. It had to be able to be shortened (we like nicknames)
6. Had to be a name that sounded cute for a kid but strong and becoming as an adult
7. We had to be able to invision ourselves yelling his or her full name when he or she was in trouble.

These rules weren't incredibly hard to follow...but we still had to "discuss" our choices. With T, we were lucky. We had always loved that name early on in our relationship. If we had a boy...he was always going to be Tyler. His middle name also came easily, as hubs lost his beloved father when he was just 19.  So Tyler James was always #1 on our list. We toyed around with Lucas and Cole, until my two close friends named their sons that. There were other names in the running, but nothing really held weight like Ty. If T ended up a girl, we had no backup plan.  Girls names just scared us. 

So began my obsession with names with Y's in them.  I know such Y additions drive some people crazy.  I knew my choices would annoy many.  I didn't care.

I grew up with a very ordinary name, and one that was shortened for me.  I was born Kristin Lynn, but became Kris in 3rd grade.  I hated it...and still do to this day.  It was important for me to love their names, and hope they loved them too. 

Naming B wasn't quite as easy.  If she was a boy, we had agreed on either Nolan Thomas or Bryce Thomas.  When we went in for our 20 week u/s and they said we were having a girl...we were shocked and intimidated.  So began the name game, that I wrote about HERE.  We toyed around with Jordyn (Jory), Alexis (Lexi), Loring (Lori), and some others...but, in my mind, I kept coming back to Brinley.  I had heard it a long time ago and, early on in our SIF journey, I had run the name by my two best friends when we were on a girls trip.  They were both so enamored with the name, that it made me love it even more.  I was actually afraid to bring it up to hubs.  I liked it so much, and I had convinced myself he would hate it.  He's not a huge fan of non-traditional names, so I assumed Brinley was a no-go.  I held onto the idea for a bit, then finally told him and...shocker...he liked it.  We played around with other names, but always came back to it. 

It was me who changed the spelling.  I knew I wanted to be able to shorten it to Bryn, and I didn't much like Brin (in Brinley).  I thought Brynley was too much of a good thing (Y's that is) so I started googling.  I found the Gaelic spelling of Brynleigh, and I loved it.  I liked that as an adult if she wanted to go as Bryn or Leigh or Brynleigh, she could do any of those, and I'd still love it and be proud of it.  I think it's a cute little girl name and a sexy and strong womanly name.  I just loved it.  I get the side-eye a lot when I say it, then spell it.  But we like it.  I hope she does too.  Anne came from my strong late Aunt that I idolize, and we felt it needed to be a short 1-syllable middle name to go with a long first and last.  So Brynleigh Anne was born (or Brynleigh Annie, as T calls her...::swoon::). 

The name game can be stressful.  My only piece of advice is make sure the two of you love it.  Don't let others get into your head.  If you think they might spew their own negative feeling onto you, keep your choice to yourself.  Ty and Bryn were the perfect choices for us.

Speaking of our kiddos...here's a sneak peek of our trip down to Myrtle Beach...