*First off, I would have posted a picture from the ultrasound, but I haven't scanned it yet, and they aren't really the clearest. So I thought this would be nice too.
On to the real news. We had the ultrasound on Monday and got our first peek at the baby. It was so cool to watch the doctor point stuff out. The neatest thing for me was when the baby would move I could feel it AND see it.
Of course, we wanted to know the gender (Ben is such a planner that I don't think he could handle it otherwise). And we are proud to be keeping up a quasi-family tradition by having a GIRL first.
I'm the oldest and a girl, and so is my mom, several cousins (8 of a possible 13), two nieces, and Ben as a sister as the oldest in his family as well. So we'll call it tradition. The doctor also moved up the due date from July 20 to July 15 because she is measuring a...healthy size for her age. We told him that both of our families were NOT known for small babies (Ben was 10 lb. 11 oz, and my siblings had huge heads--they still do actually).
At any rate, we are planning on naming her Eleanor Lee Lewis and calling her Ellie. It's a tradition in my family to give the oldest girl the middle name Lee, so that was a given. I had picked out Eleanor before I ever met Ben for a few reasons. 1) I liked it and the famous historical women who have been named Eleanor (Roosevelt, of Aquataine), 2) I'm a nerd and love Lord of the Rings, and in the end of the book Sam names his daughter Elanor after the flowers in Lothlorien. That's when I first thought of it as a name. Not that I am naming my child after LOTR, I just liked the name. 3) Elinore Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility is one of my favorite literary characters (who, incidentally, was played to perfection by Emma Thomas in the film adaptation). So that's the plan.
And besides the obvious reasons to be excited about a girl (finally a girl for me to play with!), it just means that we will have a built in baby sitter for all the boys we'll probably have to keep up the other family tradition (which is to have more boys than girls).
First of all, I love this picture. I don't think I've ever seen it before. How is that possible? Second, I love the stories behing "Eleanor" and I especially appreciate that you will be calling her Ellie, with an IE (I will take that as a small dedication to me since naming her Tiffanie would have probably caused issues with Aunt Tiffany).
ReplyDeleteAnd personally, I see no shame in namign her after LOTR (and I don't even like LOTR) but I know YOU DO! ...and at least it wouldn't be naming her after a drugstore on the corner
Yay! Girls are fun. My family is all girls. I'm excited for you. I'm also impressed with the history and background on reasons why the name Eleanor. :-)
ReplyDeleteUm, Emma Thompson?
ReplyDeleteI love your reasons too. Also, I have a two pals who named their first Eleanor. One's an Ellie and the other is Nora.