And the winner is…

Riley Ann Stanley

It’s time to reveal her name because the closer we get to her due date, the harder it has become to avoid using her name in my posts! I usually type “Riley” before “Baby Stanley” and have to edit myself anyway!

My husband and I picked “Ann” for a middle name a long time ago. My mother’s middle name is Ann, his sister’s middle name is Anne, his mom’s middle name is Anne, and his aunt’s first name was Anne. It seemed like a natural choice for a middle name because it’s a family name on both sides!

The first name was tough to settle on for a baby girl, but picking a boy name was easy. My husband, father-in-law, and grandfather-in-law (phew, mouth full!) are named Richard. However, they all have a different middle name (Richard John, Richard Douglas, and Richard Augustus, respectively). I’m not too keen on the name Richard (sorry, hubby!) to begin with. In most circles my husband is known as “RJ” (climbing gym, family) or “Rich” (work, high school buddies, and everything else), so to compromise we decided that our son would be named Richard to stick with tradition but he would go by his middle name. If she had been a he, he would have been named Richard Vincent or Richard Aidan, although we were leaning towards Vincent in the end.

It ended up being a moot point because little baby Stanley is a GIRL! We had never, ever sat down and thought of girl names. I assumed I would have a boy (yes, I know, it’s a 50/50 shot) as did my husband. It took us a while to pick a name because we didn’t like many of the same names or the names we did mutually agree on are very popular names and we were hoping to avoid that. (I have a very common name and it’s always driven me bonkers even though I love my name!)

One day my mom and I were hanging out at Barnes and Noble, perusing some baby name books and enjoying some cold beverages (coffee for her, decaf for me!). I bombarded RJ with text messages of girls names that I liked, which included the name “Riley.” At first he wasn’t too crazy about it. In fact, we has settled on an entirely different first name. We used that name for a while when we referred to Riley, but eventually we agreed that it was a) too popular and b) something didn’t quite “fit.” Around that time, he confessed that “Riley” started to grow on him and voila! That’s how she came to be Riley Ann.

Everyone knows her name and refers to her as Riley at this point. I love having a name for her because it feels like it humanizes her. I can’t wait until she is actually here, in my arms, and we can call her by name and love on her. 10 weeks seems like an eternity at this point… longer if she decides to bake the average amount of time a first time baby likes to bake (41 weeks and 1 day!).