Octavius 1 The Prudent Homemaker

This little boy is growing so fast! At his two-week appointment, he had gained over a pound. He now weighs 9 pounds 14 ounces!

I’ve been asked by many readers over the years about how we name our children. We started a tradition with our first of having a baby naming day about a week after each child was born.

With our first, we didn’t have an ultrasound, so we never knew for certain what we were having. My midwife told me that some people believe that slower heartbeats are more common in boys, and faster ones in girls. She told us our heartbeat was a slower one, and I remember thinking it would either be a boy, or a really calm girl (it turned out to be the calm girl!) Not knowing for certain what we were having was a great help, frugally, for our first; our shower gifts were more practical ones, rather than just clothing, at a time when we didn’t have the money to spare for all of the basic baby supplies.

My husband and I decided to have a date at a bookstore one night, looking through baby names together. We read through hundreds of names, suggesting different ones back and forth to one another, and also suggesting those we would never use, just for fun.

There was a man sitting near us, reading a book and hearing our exchange. He looked up after a while and said, “You guys take this pretty seriously, don’t you?”

As it turned out, our first was a girl, and the names we had been considering for a boy were no good at all. 

My recovery from her birth was long, and our main concerns were helping me and learning to take care of the baby. Naming her was far from my mind.

She was born before Christmas, and my parents were coming for Christmas. My husband said to me on Christmas Eve, “It’s Baby Naming Day!” We spent that day choosing a name. We started with our first rule then: No family names. My husband didn’t want any hard feelings between family members if we chose names from one side of the family or the other.

I grabbed my Longman’s Anthology of English Literature, hoping for some baby name inspiration. By chance, I came across this poem from William Blake:

Infant Joy
I have no name,
I am but two days old–
What shall I call thee?
I happy am
Joy is my name–
Sweet joy befall me!

 

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy but two days old.
Sweet joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while,
Sweet joy befall thee

 

After going all the way through the book, skimming for name ideas, I still had nothing. I went back looking for words that I could use as a name instead, and this time around, I noticed a poem entitled,  “Winter.”

Seeing it was December when she was born, we decided that this was an appropriate name.

Octavius Baby Feet The Prudent Homemaker

With our second, we didn’t even discuss a name ahead of time. About a week after he was born, my husband again chose a day and declared it was baby naming day. We brought me a stack of papers he had printed online of baby names in alphabetical order and a pen. He said, “Circle any you like.” I didn’t circle anything until I got to the C’s, and then the name jumped out at me from the page: “Cyrus.” I called my husband in, and he liked it too. Baby naming day was quick and easy that time.

With our third, it wasn’t quite so easy. By this time, we had decided that any names that were on the Social Security top 100 list were out of the running. My husband was one of 5 Steves in class as a child, and he didn’t want our child to have that same experience. We went looking for scriptural names on baby naming day, (but they couldn’t be on the top 100!) which is how we decided  my husband decided on Ezrom. There are a couple of variations of his name: “Esrom” and “Hebron”, depending on where you look and what translation you are reading.  

Liberty, our fourth, was a different story. I had heard the name Liberty and liked it a lot, but my husband thought with our third that any names we mentioned ahead of time should be tossed (another odd “rule” we stuck in there), so I kept the name quiet until after she was born before I suggested it. I also liked the name Wren (I used to visit teach a young woman named Eliza Wren in college), and suggested it as well. Once we decided on Liberty, I suggested we use Wren as a middle name My husband suggested that we keep the name Wren in case we had another girl.

Our fifth was a girl, and so we actually had a name to start with when we had baby naming day (only 4 days after her birth). We talked about other names, including Lark, but in the end, Wren was her name.

For our sixth, we were down to 4 names, all variations of the same name! I don’t remember all 4 now, but I do remember that it was odd how similar they were and that Elsa and Liesl were two of the 4. In the end, my husband told me to just pick one! That was hard, but I chose Elsa, never dreaming that a few years later everyone would be talking about Elsa in the context of a Disney princess.

For our seventh, I was again down to four names. I really liked the name Ruby, but my husband didn’t. I called her Ruby for several days before our official baby naming day. In the end, I was also considering Poppy and Peony, plus another I no longer recall. I couldn’t narrow it down and there was no way my husband wanted Ruby. I decided to look again, and I found a list of baby “nature” names online. “Ivory” was on that list, and like Cyrus’ name, it jumped out at me. I suggested it to my husband, and he liked it–and baby naming day was done.

This last baby was the hardest to name. I joked about calling him Henry, since he was the eighth, but it was only a joke. (“Henry” is currently 29 on the U.S. list and 19 on the U.K. list). We went through several names, and I tried on each one for a few days before our baby naming day. The day we were planning for baby naming day this time was a Sunday, as we didn’t have time to do a naming day on a weekday as we have in the past. Sunday I ended up with a terrible sinus headache, so we put it off a week. 

In the end, come the next Sunday (which we made our “official” baby naming day), I pretty much knew what I wanted and wasn’t able to be swayed. I decided this name, and as he is the eighth, it’s quite appropriate.

Everyone, welcome Octavius.

Baby 8 2 weeks The Prudent Homemaker

 Octavius Awake The Prudent Homemaker

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82 Comments

  1. This is probably one of my favorite posts you’ve ever done! Thank you for giving us such a personal look into your life. Octavius is precious!

  2. Hi Brandi and yes Octavious is a wonderful name for your eighth child. You are right he is getting so big ! .

  3. I love all of your children’s names and Congratulations on Octavius. I am in the process of baby naming, we are adopting two from foster care and we are keeping the four year olds name but choosing a name for the baby. They make 6 for us. All of our children’s middle names honor someone special to us. I hope to add two more to our group, a total of 8…I am not sure what the future holds yet. Congratulations Brandy.

  4. Welcome Octavius! What a blessing he is Brandy…My daughter in love ..Rosie is from Bulgaria. They have a lot cutural celebrations…NAME DAY is one of them. 🙂 I read your blog weekly, some weeks daily. I am inspired by you being such a virtuous women. I love to work with children, garden, sew, cook, make crafts and handmade gifts and live as frugally as possible. Thank you for all the guidance that you have given me and others. Blessings…

  5. Seems like the perfect name to me! Octavius is a beautiful little guy. What a sweet story! Our family has self imposed rules about baby names, too. All of our kids are named after baseball players, even our daughter! Of course, it’s been a little tougher as we have more babies to find the perfect name, but I guess we all have that struggle to a certain degree.

    Congrats again!

  6. He’s beautiful!!! What a wonderful tradition of naming the baby! Our first born was declared to be a girl by church and family. No ultrasound reveal. He was a boy and I knew it too. 😉 I was given girl things to galore. Anyway, We had settled on the name Caleb Allen right after he was born and the dh whisked him off to the nursery and called his mom in PA. In the meanwhile, I changed my mind. LOL. When the dh got back, I told him that I didn’t like it. So we changed it to Nathaniel Allen. The dh didn’t tell his mother for two weeks. So he was Caleb in PA and Nathaniel in KY. The name suits him. If we had left it Caleb, we would have had a Caleb and Joshua. LOL. All our children have Biblical first names with family middle names.

    Welcome to this big wonderful world, Octavius! May your life be filled with wonderful blessings from our Heavenly Father.

  7. Welcome to the world Octavius! My husband and I agreed on our daughter’s first name right away, but took MONTHS to agree on her middle name. Her name, roughly translated, means “my girl” in Italian. We both have Sicilian ancestry.

  8. I LOVE your naming process and all of your children have such thoughtful, unique names. Octavius is such a strong name. Welcome to your family, sweet spirit!

  9. As one of a bajillion Jennifers born in the 70s, I love non-boring names. I think Octavius is a great name!

    Two of our three have names far out of the top 100. Our eldest daughter is an Elizabeth, because I loved Jane Austen and have read Pride and Prejudice every year for the past 25 years. I always wanted to name a daughter Elizabeth, ever since I read the book at 13. With our oldest, our son Jonah, we had gone through infertility treatments. We didn’t know if we would ever have a pregnancy, and had started looking at adoption agencies and even filled out preliminary paperwork. We had a shocking surprise pregnancy test at a point when we truly believed it would never happen for us. We named him Jonah because the Hebrew word for “dove” is Jonah, and the dove is the symbol of hope.

    Our youngest is Cordelia, which has finally breached the top 1000. She was also a huge shock, and we knew she would be the last. We named her after King Lear’s youngest daughter, his good daughter, and the name suits her.

  10. OH! I LOVE the name Octavius – it is such a wonderful unique name 🙂
    We knew what each of our children were at the ultrasounds. With our first I could NOT get my husband to even begin to think of a name. So, as I was getting desperate and overdue, I removed all of his “reading material” in the bathroom and left the baby name book. It worked and he picked Tristan James and I agreed. Our daughter was to be Mara Rose (We thought about naming her Mara Jade – from the Star Wars books – she doesn’t think that’s funny 😀 ) a few days before her due date we were watching the remake of Sabrina with Harrison Ford and we turned to each other and decided that was a much better name! I had more names picked for more babies but that never came to be.

  11. i aboslutely love your names!! my hubs is pretty set on things so we didnt go out of the box too much. i really liked willow, wren, carolina, everly, iris, viola, and maybelle.
    we ended up with katharine sophia grace. (vintage actress names)

  12. My husband has always had a William in the family , so when Bill the Joiner died when i was 8 months pregnant it was going to be a little Bill and sure enough we got a Will . The nicest bit was when Bills widow a distant cousin we had never met turned up at the door to bless the baby with silver , she just held him and smiled and said hes very Bill . Ive traced the Bills back to the 1600s and i would imagine it goes much further .

  13. Welcome Octavius. It was so interesting getting to hear some of your baby name traditions. We also look outside of the top 100 for names, though our official “rule” is just not in the top 50 names.

  14. Early on my husband and I decided to not name our children with family names; we simply gave them each a sturdy, not too common, old-fashioned name that we liked. When our youngest was a few years old, a cousin sent to me our family tree from my father’s side of the family. I was amazed to see all three of my kids’ names right there, 3 and 4 and 5 generations back.
    Congratulations on your beautiful new child.

  15. This post was definitely worth the wait! When I read his name I gasped. Octavius is the name I was so hoping you would name him!!! It’s such a perfect name for your precious baby boy! I can’t wait to tell my husband! I talk to him every day about this. 🙂 Congratulations on your naming day and enjoy Octavius and all of your other sweet children. Hugs to all of you.

  16. I also looked outside the top 100. We settled on Brenna for our only child.

    Isn’t Octavius the first name Cinderella gives to the new mouse in the house? “For short, we’ll call you Gus.”

  17. I love this post! Welcome, Octavius!

    We are trying to find names we like for our third. I never thought to look up “nature” in search engine with names. I’m going to have to try doing word combos like that. I’m tired of seeing the same ones over & over that are overused in our families or just plain don’t sound nice with our last name. Thanks for the peek into your naming thought process! Congrats again, Simper family!!

  18. Welcome Octavius! I loved hearing about each child’s name. In our family we have my favorite part of the alphabet: LMNO. It started off innocently with the twins Laurel and Maisy but my husband thought we’d better keep it going (and I really wanted the name Norah so I agreed!). Ending it off with Ollie is pretty perfect and helps everyone keep them straight! 🙂

  19. Thank you for the history of your children’s naming process, and I love the name Octavius! I also have a very different name and found I have enjoyed that difference all my life.

    Wonderful photos too! You write so well, I really enjoyed this post, thanks again. A great way to start the day with a smile.

  20. A very fitting name! Congrats!

    So fun to read about your baby naming traditions. I don’t have kids, but I love to look through baby name books. 🙂

  21. This was a lovely post. Usually you see a “theme” with names in a family – but yours I couldn’t figure out (not that I needed too!). Octavius to me feels like a strong but gentle personality.
    Welcome to your family Octavius!

  22. I love this post and the baby naming day idea! He is so beauty. And the name is perfect,!

  23. Welcome sweet Octavius~ wonderful name! I love how you and your husband named your children and the tradition you both developed. When I was pregnant with my last child ( #5) I knew he was going to be a boy, and I loved the name of Jacob..so I called him Jacob for months while I was carrying him. Then after birth, my husband had decided he really wanted to name him Joshua..and so~ we did. 🙂 Congratulations on your growing family~ such a beautiful family. And, Octavius is a handsome blue eyed baby boy

  24. I love how you pick names. We also wait. We also have homebirths and do not find out gender or pick baby names before baby is born. After 3 boys and 3 homebirths our 4 child was a plan homebirth. The Lord plans prevails. Earlier this month, at 40 weeks and 4 days we discovered I had complete placenta previa. Praise God the bleeding had stopped so instead of emergency cesarean we had one scheduled 8 hours after I last ate. Thankfully our doula told us when we were being admitted to the hospital we are required to name the baby before we leave the hospital. God took care of it! The hospital staff requested my wish for me to bond with baby and for myself look to see we have a girl!!! My husband said all the staff where so excited to watch us do something outside the norm. God gave us a name in the time frame we needed and we now have a Rebecca Faith.

  25. Welcome Octavius! You are so blessed to have such wonderful parents and seven lovely siblings!

    (P.S. The posting was wonderful and the photographs beautiful!)

  26. Terrific post. Thanks for sharing. My son’s teacher next year is first name Alpha last initial Z, and I once had an eye doctor who was the last of 16 kids and his middle name was Omega, because his mom was DONE. 🙂 Love Octavius for an 8th kid. Enjoy him!

  27. Congratulations Brandy! You have a most handsome son. Names for our children are so special as they carry them with them for life. We always hoped that we would have meaningful names for our 4 sons. Each child adds unique talents and qualities to their family and you always hope their name will reflect on those gifts. We chose a completely different name for out last son, Lars, because he had a very different and unique quality. Thank you for taking the Cinderella photo shoot in December of our Lars’ unique and growing talents of clothing design and construction. Enjoy your beautiful Octavius!

  28. Octavius is beautiful! Congratulations to you and your family. Do you give your children middle names as well?

  29. I agree, this was a wonderful post, learning the meaning behind the names and your tradition. Hello Octavius 🙂

    We have Andreas, Eliana, Markus, Johanna and Olivia. We both have German last names, and my family tends to stick with a German-sounding name. We used his middle name Levi, for the boys. We used my middle name for the girls. We did not name them after anyone in the immediate families. It is very common though on my husband’s side to name after a family member, especially an aunt or uncle or oneself, so the names are always repeating. My husband always used his middle name as he was named after his father. We never had an US or a name picked out ahead of time.

  30. Aw! He’s so precious! And those big blue eyes :).

    When it comes to baby names, my daughter’s was rather humorous. My husband and I kept debating on names for months. Like you, we didn’t want family names involved because in the event we had a son family names would dictate his name (my son is the fifth in line :). We went through baby books and circled names for girls we liked and then made a list from that.

    We both decided we loved the name Yuri (Japanese for lily), but we are in such a heavy Russian area we didn’t want her to get teased for having a Russian boy’s name. We finally settled on Armina, the female form of Arminius and stuck with the Yuri for a middle name. She lives up to her name, too. Talk about a child who knows her own mind and will go to war over it *laugh*.

  31. Beautiful name and beautiful post. My siblings and myself all have very unique names and now that I am older, I appreciate it. My husband and I have two boys and they were given traditional, biblical names. My oldest son and daughter in law have two boys and both have a form of their fathers first name and both middle names start with a j. It gets very confusing at the doctor’s office sometimes! If I had ever had a girl, her first name would have been Piper.

  32. I too picked not family names. I did it because I felt each child deserved their own name as a unique person that they are. I picked Susan and to this day she has never run into a Susan less than 40 years her senior and Gregory and likewise for him grown men are named Gregory but no young boys now a days are. Everyone knows how to say and for the most part spell (some folks can’t be helped they can’t spell anything) the names. They are good strong names and if the children like they have plenty of nic names to choose from as well.

  33. A royal name for the little prince! He is a beautiful baby. I enjoyed your writing on how you named each child.

  34. What a sweet little boy your precious Octavius is! LOVE the pictures you have shared with us, Brandy! I’ve enjoyed reading how you chose your children’s names. Thanks for sharing their stories with us. I was wondering, do you ever use short form names or nick names for any of your children?

    I also set the rule that I did not want my child’s first named after anyone I knew, family or otherwise. I wanted to think of her as her own person. I also refused to name my child after any animals I knew, since at the time I worked as a veterinary technician. I had a name that was less popular growing up and hated it, so I did want to choose one a bit more “trendy”. Ironically, my husband and I agreed we both liked the name Alexis quite early in my pregnancy, but had a really hard time coming up with a boy name. Good thing it turned out to be a girl! We chose Elizabeth as her middle name because I like historic names and I love the way the name Alexis Elizabeth flows together. My daughter prefers to be called Lexi.

  35. Octavius is such a beautiful baby. I see he is going to be blue-eyed as compared to brown-eyed. My son was named Rye William. I hated the name, but it meant a lot to my husband. He picked it with our first pregnancy and waited for 6 years to use it. My husband’s grandfather’s name was Riley. There were already three Riley’s in the family. He wanted to name our son after his grandfather’s nickname. Donald called him Pap Rye. Again. I say I hated the name. However, the name suits my son so well. William was after my grandfather.

  36. He is beautiful! Octavius is such a cute little name. We are on baby number 5 and searching for a name I hope to have a 8 one day 😉

  37. I really like the name, if it is not too personal what are the middle names of your children? In our family of 6 babies, one born dead, we all have middle names but me. I have often wished to have a middle name. My mother had a sick sense of humor. She actually named me after the woman my father was engaged to when he met her. My mother was engaged too. They met because of a wrong phone number. Their marriage lasted 56 years till my dad passed away.

  38. What a precious bundle of joy! You have a wonderful naming tradition!
    Our last child was named by my husband; After we decided, together, the names of the first two, i felt he needed to name our youngest. He chose well.

  39. I’m not a fan of nicknames, which is why most of our children have short names! That’s kind of a rule that I put in–2 syllable names only–but then we have 2 exceptions! Liberty goes by Libby, and while it’s a nice name, too, I am not a fan of nicknames Not sure how it will work out for this child, with a 4-syllable name! I hope he doesn’t end up with a nickname, though.

  40. Your photos of him are precious! His name is suitable indeed, although with 4 syllables, I predict a nickname eventually. My FIL had strict rules for naming boys–of which he had two. Family first name, and a family last name (mother’s maiden name, preferably) were the formula. My husband’s nephew is at LEAST the 5th generation of Williams. I am working on genealogy of his family and it’s most confusing! We were lucky enough to have only girls, so I wasn’t forced to confront my FIL, although I would have gone against his plan for sure. I specifically chose names that would not make “easy” nicknames, were different enough so there wouldn’t be several in each classroom, but were not so unusual that people would have to ask how to spell them. We ended up with Audrey Gail and Jill Dianne. I am still happy with those names, although of course they went through times of not liking them so well themselves. And Jill was born in England, where Jill and Gillian were horribly popular after my Jill was born in 1964. I was glad the name did not become AS popular in the US.
    I’m glad Octavius is nursing well and growing already. Mine were 3 months old before they hit the 10# mark, but they were only 6# at birth.

  41. Only my first and third have middle names, and because I insisted, not knowing if they would like their names. Winter is Winter Anne (with an “e”, of course, from this Anne of Green Gables fan!) and Ezrom’s middle name is Eli, which is the name I wanted to call him. None of the others have one; my husband feels middle names are unneccessary and never uses his. He figures with such different names, our children aren’t likely to come across too many people with the same first and last name, so they are good!

    Interestingly enough, I asked both of these children just recently if they like their names, and they do 🙂

  42. Yes, at this rate, he is likely to outgrow his clothes very quickly. The newborn diapers were too small, though I used the two packs I had bought and opened anyway (I knew there was a chance of an accident, but he went through them so fast and we had no trouble!)

    Most of mine have short names, to avoid nicknames (the other “rule” that I should have included, which is one I wanted, was to have short names to avoid nicknames) but Liberty became Libby, with a 3-syllable name. I know I’m taking a risk with such a long name, especially when I detest nicknames. I’m hoping we can avoid one anyway!

  43. Oh, he is a scrumptious little dumpling! What a beautiful baby. How is he doing? May he always bring happiness and fun into your home! I read in a book once that had 3 rules for giving a name – it must be unique, it must be memorable, and it must be worthy. I think Octavius hits all three of those requirements! Congratulations again! I hope your family is pitching in with lots of help and love to you and the sweet new bundle as you all adjust to this new life with 8 children!

  44. When we announced our son Tristan’s name my FIL immediately said – we can call him Stan – UM NO YOU CAN’T!!! I was very lucky I never had to say another word about it although his name has been shortened to Tris by most of the family and his friends from high-school and his sister call him Triscuit. Sabrina got shortened to Brina by most of the family as well – it wasn’t anything we planned – it just happened 🙁

  45. Welcome to our world
    Won’t you come on in
    Miracles I guess
    Still happen now and then.

    welcome to the world, Octavius.

  46. What a beautiful baby boy and a perfect name for him. I am so happy for you!

    It’s funny that you chose unique names because you had common ones and I chose common names because mine is odd and I always wanted to be a Lindsay or Jennifer. I guess the grass is always greener! I chose a vowel theme and my next has to be a u or and I name and all the u names leave a bad taste in my mouth so probably an I, we shall see.

    I hope your recovery was easy and your family is adjusting well to the new addition. All the best.

  47. Simply beautiful and very fitting.
    We named our son from a book I was reading while I was pregnant, the title of the book was the same as our surname and the lead character was named Jacob. So Jacob it was. That was 28 years ago and our Jake is now an amazing man in his own right. With our daughter I wanted something feminine and old fashioned and definitely no old family names ( my middle name is Norah, after my grandmother, I have never liked that name) so we named her Ashleigh Lauren, our darling girl likes to be called Ash so Ash it is.
    Kindest regards
    Fi

  48. I don’t mind nicknames, but I have always called my daughter by her full name as well as her nickname, so she is used to both. I like the idea that as a professional, she can be called by her full name, but family and friends can affectionately refer to her by nickname.

  49. Nicknames are a given in my family…they tend to use the diminutive. My sister Petronia and I are Thani and Troni (long A long O), my mother Janina is Jani ( like Yanni), my brothers are Tommy, Billy, Davey and Joey. My grandma Annalina was Anni etc etc. Our children get called Andy, Elli, Marky, Hanni and Livvi. But these are family nicknames, used among ourselves. At school, church, work etc we go by our given names.

  50. I read someplace about a culture where the child names him or herself when they hit 11, I believe it was. I wish I had been raised with that tradition because I have hated my name for my entire life. On the other hand, my parents were not as thoughtful as you are about names—if they had been, I might have liked mine more. Your children have such strong and elegant names. I was a fat little kid and can remember being taunted with “Mable the Table.” My poor sister was named Marfa, after a character in a book according to my mother. She was called “Marfa the Barfa” by cruel classmates. When she married, she changed both her first and last names; I wish I had thought of that! Anyway, Octavius is an absolutely gorgeous name for a lovely looking baby.

  51. Brandy, were you able to take pictures with your children on Mother’s Day? Do you have a recent family photo? Your children are all growing and changing! Love your family photos!

  52. This might be one of my favorite posts from you, Brandy! Thank you for such a personal glimpse into how you name your beautiful children. Welcome to the world, Octavius!

  53. I enjoyed reading how you go about your baby naming process. Though I didn’t have little ones, I expect I would have thought outside the usual for names as well. He’s a beautiful boy. Welcome Octavius!

  54. He is such a beautiful baby boy. Congratulations and best wishes again. I love his name. I would never have dared name my child something like that. My family put me through XXXX because I wanted to name my oldest son Rhett. Buttler is a family name, so all I heard while I was expecting was how awful the name was. My husband was not with me while I was pregnant. (he was a Marine serving active duty on a ship) most of my pregnancy. He was going to let me name the baby anything I wanted too. Then when he came home we talked and decided to name our son Mathew Thomas. A week before our son was born, my cousin, who was pregnant too, lived next door to me, had her baby 2 days before me and named her son Thomas Mathew. No, we had never discussed that she was going to name her son Thomas Mathew. She was a ‘hippy’ type and told me she was going to name her son Levi. I was crushed. There I was past due by several weeks. (3 weeks and 5 days) and no name. So my husband the Marine steps in. He named our son Jr. So that is how we got a Jr. in our family. Sometimes families can be so difficult. Yes, I did forgive my cousin, but things were never the same between us. We have not spoken in years.

  55. I can so relate to your comment, Mable. Never liked my name for the same reason! I still have people sing “Help Me, Rhonda” like I’ve never heard it before…seriously, so annoying!!! And that was one of the nicer taunts.:(

  56. Octavius…now that is a name that suits that precious child. eyes as blue as the ocean. such a sweet child, wish i lived close to you so i could hold him. he seems so alert. you are a lucky person. i hope you post a lot of pictures and your last one, haven’t seen a picture of her in a while. you take good care of yourself, tell the children hello for me. how is winter’s sewing classes going? hope you all have a good week. until later. nancy

  57. I enjoyed this post. When my husband and I were dating we talked about children and found our top four boy names and top four girl names matched. So we knew it would be easy to name roughly our first six to eight kids.

    Turns out Heavenly Father has a sense of humor because our first three children came to us at an older age through adoption and therefore were already named… None of their names were on our list, but they fit our children perfectly.

    We did have the opportunity to name our forth with boy name #1. Hopefully more in the future, but if not it was a great conversation to have while dating.

  58. There was a guy I grew up with whose dad was named Seventeen. He was the 17th child and they just couldn’t decide on a name.

  59. What a beautiful baby boy! I have to say, I have never seen such a unique method for naming babies! I really enjoyed reading about how you chose each name. We use family names (I’m the fourth Pauline in my family in five generations, so I really love that), but also throw in a non-family, but meaningful name with them.

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