What's In a Name?

Autumn Violet

Many of you know that "Autumn" has always been "our girl name". Jason wrote a song called "Four Seasons of Love" and the very first line of the song is, "As Autumn arrived, I was falling for you..." It was fall when Jason and I first started dating and falling in love and way back at the beginning, we agreed that we loved Autumn for a girl's name.

It was the only name we had picked out and agreed on when Easton was born...back then we would've picked a Hawaiian middle name (like Easton's is "Kai"). But anytime we've found ourselves expecting, while we visit other possibilites for a girl's name, there was none we ever loved as much as Autumn.

Sure she wasn't born in autumn, or even conceived in autumn, but that's when her parents met and fell in love so it's a special season for us. And even though she's only been around 5 days, we've gotten tons of compliments on her name.

When I first told the boys the possible baby names a few weeks ago I told Dalton, "If it's a girl, she'll be Autumn" and he said, "Autobot?" (which is the "good guys" of Transformers). :) However, neither kid has had a hard time switching from "Wabie" at all. Sort of a surprise.

Her middle name "Violet" is after my great grandmother. If it was a boy, his middle name would've been after Jason's best friend that passed away (who's initials are on J's tattoo). We weren't absolutely set on using the name of a lost loved one, but at the same time, we never found anything we liked more. Violet was Grammy's mom...she missed being a great-great-grandmother by less than a year. Here is she the last time I saw her, this was August of 2003, right before I met Jason. That is Lauren and I with her, if you couldn't tell:


Here she is in some of her earlier days:




I asked Grammy to bring some pictures of Violet when she came to visit and she brought a bunch! We'll be putting some up on the wall of Autumn's room.

She'll also need some violets in her room. A night or two before "Wabie" was born, Jason came in from outside remarking, "You know, I don't put much stock into "signs" but I find it interesting that most of our flowers that came back from last year are the violet ones":


Or he checked his email one night and said, "You know...maybe it will be a girl because I just got a "Welcome Autumn" coupon from the Melting Pot." :)

I had Facebooked about how, on the way to dropping off my jugs of urine one day, I'd heard both Martina McBride's "In My Daughter's Eyes" and Foreigner's "Waiting for a Girl Like You". However, on the way home from the lab I heard the Footloose "Let's Hear it for the Boy" song.

And you can't forget my PF Chang's fortune from early on either:


Looking back, it's kind of fun, but there were plenty of things that pointed to "boy" along the way too, I'm sure.

However, upon the news of hearing, "You've got a girl!!!" in the delivery room, I think after "Woo hoo! Hooray!" and such, the next thing to cross both Jason and my mind was, "At least we don't have to fight about a name." Seriously, if we'd had a boy, he might still be nameless. Seriously.