Our sweet girl shall be named.....

Anna Lorraine Clarkson

For Eli's pregnancy, we had several girl & boy names picked out....mostly girls....not because I preferred a girl, but I guess girls think of girl names, & boys...boy names! I knew I wanted to use our first letters (A & E) but was not sure if we would use an "E" name for a boy & "A" name for a girl or vice versa. Along with Elijah, we (moreso me) liked Evan, Ethan, Alexander, & Ashton. For girl names, I liked Abigail, Alexandria, Ava, Emma, & Eva. We decided to use an "E" name once we found out Eli was a boy. Then, as time went on, Elijah (we knew we would call him Eli) really stuck with me. I just kept going back to it! As for his middle name, Lee, it is a family name being my dad's & Eric's mom's middle name. Here's our post about naming Eli.

So, for Anna, once again, we just liked it. For the longest time I thought we would name her Abby, short for Abigail or Abilynn. But, Anna just stuck in my mind for a couple of months! Plus I think it is a very sweet & simple name.



As for Lorraine, it is my grandmother's middle name (the one I always refer to as the great cook, amongst other wonderful things). My grandmother loved birds, red birds in particular. Their house has a 3 window breakfast nook with a tree directly outside of it where they would very diligently maintain bird feeders. My grandmother loved sitting at the table & watching the birds....the red ones being her favorite. My sister, Holly, came up with the idea since my grandmother's passing about 6 years ago, that when we saw red birds, it meant grandma was near. These last couple of weeks I have seen several red birds around...just randomly sitting in a bush or tree outside my window when I happened to look out (of course this isn't TOTALLY odd since our neighbors have several bird feeders :). Regardless, it seemed to be a small sign to me that we needed to give our little girl her middle name.

So, there you have it, Eli & Anna....how cute is that?? :)