What's in a name?

I've had many people ask where we came up with the name Layla Michelle?  I'm sure so many are wondering, especially since Evie's name is a family name with such strong meaning.  Well, Mike and I never realized how difficult it would be to name a second little girl!  We wanted to make sure it had a lot of meaning like her sister, but one that would sound okay with Evie, and then what if there ended up being a third in the future...we didn't want it to sound too much like Evie....should we have one with a nickname again?  let's go through family names.......etc.  So many things to think about and just about the time we found out it was another girl and were ready to start talking about names we also got the notice that we were relocating to Atlanta.

Once we were settled in Atlanta and realized we only had a few months before baby #2 was to arrive we started talking about names again a little more seriously.  We finally each created a list of names and started to narrow it down from there.  We looked up the meaning of all the names on our lists (eliminating the one that meant "weapon"....lol) and narrowed it down some more.  Layla means "night beauty" or "brown eyed, dark complected beauty."  I thought maybe with this name we would get another brown eyed beautiful girl like her sister:0)  I think the real decision came for me when I went down our list of about five names and had Evie try to say them.  Most of them were difficult to understand from her interpretation, but when I heard her say "Yay-ya" something just melted my heart!  So Layla it is......our night beauty, essentially named by her sister!

Michelle was a much easier decision as this name comes from her daddy, "Michael" and from my sister "Shelly" whose real name is Michelle.   Let's hope she continues to prove that she is as laid back as her daddy and as she gets older I hope she will have the drive and strength of her Aunt Shelly:0)

Even though this doesn't have anything to do with her name, I just thought I'd add this photo.  This is a plate we have in our kitchen.  We were using it as our countdown before we were to meet our sweet Layla.  I didn't have a chance to change it to 7 days prior to leaving for the hospital:0)......as she ended up creating her own timeline and arriving 7 days before our scheduled c-section and 14 days before her anticipated due date:0)