The Story of "Juliet Lynn"

As Shakespeare's Juliet said:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet?"

Since finding out that our newest little one would be a girl, Keith and I had decided that we would wait until we saw her to pick whether we'd name her "Juliet" or "Aurora". While (like I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, What's in a Name?) I like to be able to plan things and was a little bit uneasy about not having a definite name for her, as Juliet Capulet implied, I knew that no matter what we named her, she would still be our same sweet little girl!

Everyone in the OR with us for the c-section knew that we had decided on the name "Juliet" or "Aurora". As soon as the anesthesiologist saw her, she said "She looks like a 'Juliet' to me!" Maybe that was just her favorite name of the two and she was trying to influence us to pick that. Keith and I got a quick look at the baby before she headed out to get the tests done and cleaned up in the nursery, so we didn't decide on anything then. Not much later, I was in recovery and was doing so well that Keith was able to bring her to me in recovery. After everyone came in to see us (well, really her), they left so Keith and I could have some alone time with her and I could feed her for the first time. It was during those quiet moments that we decided that we were 100% sure that she is a "Juliet Lynn"!

We had previously decided that her middle name was going to be "Lynn" which is short for my mom's name, Linda. When we were throwing around names for a middle name, we knew that we wanted something that would honor my side of the family (since Annabelle's middle name, Claire, is a legacy of Keith's side of the family). My mom's life-long best friend, who has always been known to us as "Aunty Paula" and is now known to our kids as "Grammy Paula", has always called her "Lin" (I believe that's how she spells it). So when brainstorming middle names, when we came up with Lynn, we both immediately fell in love with it and the special meaning behind it!

Because we have all been calling Juliet by the name "Baby" for so long, we're still having a little bit of a hard time calling her by anything else. Both Annabelle and Corgan call her "Baby" nearly every time they refer to her (Annabelle will call her "My Baby" or "Baby Juliet" sometimes though), and I am definitely having to be conscious about purposefully calling her "Juliet" instead of "Baby" to get myself trained to call her by her real name.

A long time ago, we jokingly told the kids that if Baby was born with blue eyes, we were going to name her "Aurora" and if she was born with green eyes, we'd name her "Juliet". I thought that if anyone had a problem with us not picking "Aurora", it was going to be Annabelle because she had really fallen in love with the name (although later on her love was split between the names Aurora and Paris). However, Corgan is still having a hard time accepting that we decided to name her Juliet despite her dark blue eyes. When we were in the hospital, both big kids colored pictures for me and Juliet, but Corgan still wrote "Aurora" on his picture because he liked that name better. A few times when I've called her "Juliet" to him, he has asked me for verification that "Her eyes are blue, not green; right?" He has even told some people that her name is "Aurora" when they ask him what his new little sister's name is! Thinking that this is just a phase, I've told him a few times that he can keep calling her Aurora if he wants to, and that can be his special nickname for her. Just a couple of days ago, I told him he could keep calling her Aurora, and he said "I don't want to just call her Aurora. I want YOU to call her that, and Daddy, and Annabelle, and Grammy, and Papa too!" He's SO in denial about her name being Juliet! I'm sure he'll eventually come around, but I'm surprised that he's still upset about it 6 days after she was born!

So, there you have it, the story of our sweet little rose, "Juliet Lynn Donald"!

P.S. And yes, the fact that the earlier blog was titled "What's in a Name?" was definitely a nod to the fact that we were leaning toward "Juliet" at that time, even though we had still decided to wait to see what she looked like. :)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

another picture for my mom's fridge.... nvl

Scott and Dalana Zech said...

She is as beautiful as her name