Naming Our Baby

I think we've narrowed it down to what we want to call our China Baby. I'm getting tired of saying just that - China baby. According to HFS, as I've mentioned before, 98% of the adopted children are Girls. We are applying for either sex. It really doesn't matter to us b/c if we could have more children of our own, we couldn't chose the sex that way either.

Naming this baby wasn't easy. We had just chosen a name for our daughter, Reagan Anne, we lost in April at 19 weeks into my pregnancy right before we lost her. Coming up with names again has brought back memories of sitting around trying to name her (and picking out boys names as well b/c we didn't know the sex until 6 days before her death).

The first name we chose I have loved for a long time. It was on my list for Reagan but in the end we chose Reagan. Anne is my given middle name (except now I use my maiden name as my middle name.) My mother's middle name was Ann and she gave her middle name to me with an E on the end. Logan's first name is William, just like his daddy's name and granddaddy's name and great-granddad's name. All of them have different middle names. So, I wanted my daughter to have my middle name since our son got a family name.

Today while I'm in Wal-Mart looking at toys with Logan (we always have to look at toys when we go there), I look at the girl toys while he looks at the boy toys (on the same aisle of course). I've been searching for an Asian Cabbage Patch doll but still haven't found one I like. One of the dolls that came to my attention was a blond, green eyed girl. I have green eyes and used to be blond in my younger days. Her first name was the same one I wanted to use for a while with the middle name Adrianna. Wow! I loved it! However, I questioned why I couldn't modify that just a little. After Tony came home I wrote down on a piece of paper the name I saw on the doll and then below that I wrote the first name I have wanted, the modified middle name and then our last name Hooker. He liked it!

So now we have a girl name chosen for our China Baby. Here it is................



Madelyn Adrianne Hooker



Now I wish I had bought that Cabbage Patch Doll. Notice how I still kept part of my middle name in her middle name. Her birthday on the card was July 24th. I have a good feeling that our baby will have a birthday in July or August this year. I've tried to count down when we might get our referral and the average age at referral and counted backwards to figure out birth month.

Some parents keep part of the Chinese given name. We discussed that and may still do that but for now this is what we like. It is still subject to change, but more and likely it will stay this.

We still need to have a backup name if we get referred a boy. We'll have to think about this one for a while. We asked Logan today if he had a baby brother what would he name him and he said Joshua. Joshua is the name of one of his friends. If Reagan had been a boy, the name would have been Camden Douglas. I really have no idea now what we would name a Chinese son.

We didn't purposely plan it to be an M name b/c I have an M name, and Tony and Logan's first names are with W's (boys all W's and girls all M's) but it will look cute on our insurance card to show (just got a new one so that was on my mind)....
Hooker, William
Hooker, Melissa
Hooker, William
Hooker, Madelyn
And it wasn't planned to all have 7 letters each in them either.

I'm so happy now to finally have a name to call our daughter.