Haidyn Elizabeth Teal

We finally decided on a name!  Actually, we were pretty much decided on Haidyn when we went in for our 20 week ultrasound, but Jonathan (the name Nazi, as I like to call him) wanted to be totally sure.  He told me he needed the weekend to look through the baby name book.  Seriously?!?  Good luck with that!  What do you think I’ve been doing for the past 5 months?  A few days later he told me that he was okay with it.  Thank goodness.  Because every other girl’s name I’ve mentioned was shot down immediately.  For example, there was Olivia…to which he said, “Ewww!  Sounds like Olive Oil!” before doing his Popeye impression.  Ruined that one.  Then there was Claire…to which I heard, “In high school there was this girl with really big boobs and we used to call her ‘I-double-D-Claire.’”  Again, that was out.  So you see what I had to work with.  To make matters more complicated, as a teacher I had a couple of rules about names: 1.  Never pick a name that could be a boy OR a girl and 2.  Don’t give your child a name that’s spelled in a funky way.  Teachers hate both of those things. 

As you can tell, I broke both of my rules.  Once we were set on “Hayden,” I wanted it to look more feminine…hence “Haidyn.”  The middle name was also a bit of a struggle.  We knew we wanted to do something to honor my mom, and we finally settled on Elizabeth.  It’s my sister’s middle name and my mom’s favorite.  (Side note:  my mom used to always tell me that her two favorite girls’ names were Sarah and Elizabeth.  Guess which daughter got those names?  Yep, my sister.  Then she’d say, as if to make me feel better, only not really, “So I just let your dad pick your name.”  Can you feel the love?!?)  Anyway, back on track…that’s where Elizabeth came from.  And I’m sure you can figure out Teal for yourself…