The Name Iris Rose...

I was just thinking about how difficult is was to come up with our baby girls name. I don't think I ever posted how we finally got there. The entire year before she was born we read baby name books, researched the internet, and asked around. It was the most difficult decision of our lives to date. I mean, what you name your child sticks with them for life! This was a heavy weight to carry. We had not even decided on her name as I was going into labor. We had written lists upon lists of options, but were never quite sure. I even dropped the main list of names that D.J. and I had been working on for so long behind our couch. I couldn't get my big ole' pregnant self to move our heavy couch to get it out. And I tried! I tried broom sticks and all kinds of things to get to that list with no luck. We had spent so much time working on that list throughout the baseball season that I finally said to heck with writing lists for the rest of my pregnancy. We really had no idea what our daughters name would be, but I always felt like it would come to us after we looked into her eyes for the first time. During labor, I'm pushing with all of my might with no idea what I'm about to experience as our baby enters the world. I promise you, as soon as she took her first breath, her name was laid upon my heart straight from heaven. That is exactly how it felt. I wasn't even thinking about that. It just appeared. I thought Iris Rose. It just popped in my head like that and I felt peace and pure joy. It was a very dreamlike experience. D.J. and I had talked about those two names, but had no idea that is what we would name her. We had trouble deciding if we could actually give her two flower names, but decided that it just fit her perfectly. It seems even more fitting when we found out that Iris was the Greek goddess that carried messages from heaven to earth. The same way her name came to me the day she entered our world.

The first day we arrived home from the hospital the movie "The Holiday" was on. I had never even noticed that Kate Winslet's character's name was Iris. When I heard it out loud on t.v. it was so surreal. My baby's name is Iris. :) Then, a couple of months later we moved to our home. The couch was finally moved and the list that I had created with D.J. so long ago was found. I couldn't believe what I saw when I looked at the list of names. The name Iris was at the very top! It was the first name listed! The odd thing is... is that the page was so full of names there were no more lines to fit the name Iris... sooo... I had written it at the very top of the page! All I could do was smile when I saw that. Life is so funny!