Kearyn's Story....Part 4 (Her Name)

This week I am writing about my 6 month old  baby girl, Kearyn. It has been such a fun process for me. Emotional at times, funny at times, but overall it has been good. If you haven't read the other parts of the series yet I have put the links below for your convenience.

Kearyn's Story...
Kearyn's Story....Part 1
Kearyn's Story....Part 2
Kearyn's Story....Part 3 (Her Delivery)

The day of Kearyn's birth was a glorious day. As soon as she was born we were surrounded by so many family members and close friends it was unbelievable. I think I can speak for Jason as well on this....we just felt so loved. Even though our daughter was only minutes or hours old we could feel the love that everyone had for her as well. The hospital was a bit overwhelmed by all of the guests and asked us several times if we wanted to put a sign up that we weren't available or have them turn away our visitors. Each time we declined. We just didn't feel right about the fact that we had so many people hoping and praying for us all those months to then just shut them out of the actual event. We knew that it was important for us to share that day with all who wanted to share it with us.

The big question that we continued to get was what did we name her? Since we did have so many guests we did not have time to privately pray over her and pray about her name until about 5pm or so that day. (Keep in mind she was born at 9am.) I think the grandma's were about ready to lynch us but it was very important that we prayed over her first before naming her. It was then we did settle on the name:

Kearyn Jaedance Gressman

For those of you who are wondering how to pronounce that for sure it is as follows: K-ear-in

The next question I usually get is how we came up with that name. Well...... after 3 children we found ourselves in a bit of a name pattern. We have Cale Joseph, Kylind James, and Creide Jaxton. When we started naming our children it was not my goal in life to have all my kids start with a "K" sound or anything like that it just sort of  happened. I just like boys names that start with that sound I guess. So, when we found out we were having another child my husband said we really needed to stick with the pattern or this baby would feel left out. This was not a problem if it was a boy. I already had a boys name ready to go. When we found out she was a girl......that was a whole different story. I just don't have a surplus of girls names that I like in my back pocket. I have always struggled with girls names. Jason was adamant that we stick with the pattern. K for the first name and J for the middle name. The pressure was on....

I poured through "K" girl names. I didn't find any that I liked. Jason's naming tactic is really to let me come up with the names and then he reserves veto power so he didn't really bring any to the table at all. I did like the name Kiera but it was a little popular for my liking. Then I thought of the name Evelyn. This was a middle name of one of my great grandma's. So, I combined the two names together. Kiera + Evelyn = Kieryn. So, then we had to decide how to spell it. That literally took months. I like the "ea" partly because of my name and partly because I thought it looked prettier...more feminine. So Kieryn turned into Kearyn. I later found out that Kearyn (or Kieran) appropriately meant "ray of light." She has definitely been a ray of light to our family. It was amazing to me that through that whole process that God provided us with such a perfect name.

As for the middle name.... I originally wanted her middle name to be "Jae" after Jason. But then I really wanted my name to be in there as Kearyn is our last child. So, I thought of Jaeda or Jaedan but couldn't settle on anything for sure. One morning I was laying in bed and thought of a girls name that I liked long ago. Cadance. Jae + Cadance = Jaedance! Jason and I both loved it and it had parts of both of our names in it. Perfect!

So, that is how she got her name, long story short. ;-)

Below is a picture of Kearyn in her coming home outfit which I made from a vintage linen I found with the letter "K" embroidered on it.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my ramblings. It means a lot to me that you have taken the time out of your busy schedule to do so.

~Andrea