So now, on to her name. I guess we can't keep calling her "baby girl 3" because that's way too long and doesn't really have that 'ring' to it, ya know? And just a warning, I may need to break this up into a couple of posts. This name means so much to my heart, and it truly encapsulates so many hopes and prayers I have for our little girl. I just want everyone to know how much this name means to us. So I may take a couple posts to explain it all. For months, Sean & I figured this baby would be another girl, mainly for the fact that we had no idea what we would name another girl. We had several boys' names, but girls- nope! When Gia's adopted grandparents offered to keep her for an evening while we went on a date, we thought itd' be the perfect opportunity to really buckle down and find a name for this babe. 

We went to our usual name-picking spot: Olive Garden. Its where we went the evening we found out we were having a girl in Whitney, and also where we picked her name. We then went back to Olive Garden when I was pregnant with Gianna and again chose her name over dinner there. Its another little way we like to honor and involve the memory of Whitney in our current life, even after it has continued to move on all these years later. 

Being that we were completely at a loss for agreeing on the name, I brought some notecards and markers so that we could write down the top 2 or 3 names that each of us were thinking about. After ordering our dinner (with a starter of fried calamari, of course!), we secretly wrote down our top choices, then revealed them to each other. There was one name we agreed on, a family name, but we didn't agree on it being first or middle. It also just didn't seem to "fit" our little girl. Funny how we've not even held her yet, and there is some familiarity with her spirit already. Sean turned over his top name choice card, and at first, I wasn't thrilled. It kinda came out of nowhere and I'd never even considered it before. In fact, I had a funny connotation with name he wrote down... I immediately thought of an uber-conservative, pentecostal type girl in a long denim skirt with long hair pulled back in a bun-- Duggar style. (Her name is one of the 20+ names of the Duggar kids- there's a clue! To be clear- I love the Duggars, and admire the way they are raising Godly kids.) But, I remembered a Bible study I did last year that completely changed my life (True Woman 101), and on one of the days it was talking about when Adam established names for all the creatures. God gave him, specifically, the task of naming all the animals, and someone in our group asked if that meant that we had to let our husbands choose the names for our kids. I'd never though about it that way. While I don't necessarily think that's what's implied in the Scriptures, it definitely made me more willing to seek out Sean's reasoning behind the "top choice" name he'd brought to the table, despite my odd, initial association with the name. So I asked him why that name? When he pulled out his phone to look up the Scripture in which her name is mentioned, I knew it was "the name" for our baby girl. And after studying more about this woman of God, I am again a firm believer that there is power in what we name our children, and that names do mean something. And I am so thankful that God has given us this name for our daughter...

Gia's awake now... Stay tuned for the rest of the story in a little bit...