What's in a name???

Since our first pregnancy, we've had a running list of names we think are cool. Why? Come on, who doesn't want their kid to have a cool name? We're no different!

 

When we got pregnant with Baby Nani, we naturally gravitated to, "what do we call him or her?" The search once again began and because we did not yet know the gender, we were searching for both. However, we've got a couple solid boy names so we really didn't search too hard there.

We've mentioned before that Mayla gave us the name, Nani. We have NO CLUE where she got that from, but Google tells us it means "Grace", so it must be true, and we are running with it. At the time we didn't realize it, but we need an abundance of grace with this pregnancy.

Once we were given the Baby Nani's prognosis in week 12, shortly after finding out the gender, we felt a sense of urgency to give her a name, just in case. Around the 14th or 15th week, Keri was perusing the dark, deep caverns of the world wide web and found a name that she instantly fell in love with. It is... not yet sillies!

Before we decided the name was a go, it was important to us, for some reason, to know the meaning behind the name. I've had multiple times in life where I step back and see God's hand at work and marvel at how he cares for even the smallest things, e.g. names. The name we have chosen for Baby Nani means "yielding to prayer." Well, that settled it, first name done, on to the middle name.

Baby Nani's middle name didn't really take much time, or even thought. Throughout this entire pregnancy, Mayla has had an incredible connection to Baby Nani. And since Mayla provided the womb name, which incredibly means "Grace", so it is, done!

So all that said, I give you... just kidding.

So why are we giving the name you may be asking? Good question! Normally we wouldn't give the name prior to birth because it's something special for our family to hold on to until the proper time. Well this situation is a bit different. There are already a VERY select handful of people that know Nani's name, doctors, nurses, amazing photographer, and a couple others who have asked so they can, out of the kindness of their beautiful and generous hearts, make something special for our special little girl. We decided since the prognosis is grim for Baby Nani, that we want as many to know her as possible, and part of that is her name.

We are super stoked about the coming birth of our precious little girl and we long to call her by name, fact-to-beautiful-God-given-face. We recently had a photo session with a blessed friend of ours and staged some fun photos of her name. All that said, we are excited to share the name of our little girl...

Arabella Nani Ellis

We continuously yield to him in prayer (Arabella) and pray for his grace (Nani) on us and on you as we walk this road together. We also thank you for your continued prayers, encouragement, support, and grace, and we pray that God may bless you through the story and life of Arabella, just as he has us. ~Will