Choosing a Baby Name

I love my baby girl's name.  Kaya Marie.  It's unique, sweet, and simple.  It wasn't easy for me to find though.  Man, I was 6 months pregnant and we still hadn't decided on a name yet.  I loved the name Paisley, but Daddy didn't.  Best conversation ever:

Me:  What about Paisley?
Matt: We are not naming her after a color!
Me:  Paisley is a shape...
Matt: Same thing.
Me: OK, so can you get me a gallon of triangle paint later?  Need to touch up these walls...

We just couldn't agree on a name for anything!  I really wanted to use the middle name Marie, for my aunt who passed away a couple years ago from breast cancer that had metastasized into her bones... She was one of my favorite people in the whole world.  But coming up with a first name was hard.

image courtesy of docstoc.com

I found this No-Stress Guide to Baby Naming on thebump.com that had some good suggestions for keeping the arguments to a minimum, and on Baby Center was an article "Choosing a Name" that has a baby name finder and other resources to make it as painless as possible.

Did those help me?  Not so much.  Instead, I did what any momma who was realizing that her due date was fast approaching and their pregnant belly was still being referred to as "the baby" would do - I found an online list of baby names and meanings and spent hours days weeks looking for a name that stood out, that I loved, that we could agree on, and that couldn't be turned into a mean nickname.

Winning out?

Kaya \ka-ya\ as a girl's name is pronounced KAH-yah. It is of Japanese, Zulu, Turkish, Hopi and Hindi origin, and the meaning of Kaya is "restful place, yew tree, forgiveness; home; stone; willow, wise child; the one with the beautiful body, profile".

Now, two months later, and I still love it.