David and I debated over this little girl's name for months. Weirdly enough David and I have picked out all of our kids names way in advance (before we were married), but for some reason none of those names seemed right to me this time. We found out she was a she way back in December and I immediately started questioning the name we had previously picked out, which was PollyAnna. Polly was a family name on both sides 4 generations back and Anna was all over the chart everywhere haha. After looking over both of our family charts we both concluded that our families, for the most part, had very little creativity. Even to the point of naming several children the same name in the same family. This was usually because a child passed away, but still! The variety I was hoping to find was already found in the names we had previously agreed on.
There were lots of reasons we started to change our minds. Polly had the same ending sound as Davie and Macy (while its cute I'm not into having all my kids have similar sounding names or first letters etc), David didn't want Polly to be her nickname, which it most likely would have been, and the addition of a sister in law named Anna since we had originally picked it. David wanted to just use the next girl name on our list, but I hadn't been planning on using that name yet so it didn't feel right to me or seem to fit.
Shortly after we found out we were having a girl, I fell in love with the name Violet. It's a name I had always liked, but had never really considered. I had a tough time committing to the name Violet at first because it didn't fit our usual naming ritual. I have always loved older simpler names. Easy to say, no guess work easy to spell etc and as I got older I wanted our children's names to have lots of meaning, so I fell in love with using family names. Growing up I got called Car- E alllll the time. It wasn't my parents fault that the early 90's introduced this new way to say Kari and they were definitely thinking about me when they spelt it. My maiden name was Christiansen, that's 12 letters! They wanted to pick the easiest and shortest spelling for my name that they could.
The only problem is Kari isn't that common and I don't know if I've ever had someone spell it right on the first try. Because of this I wanted my kids to have an easier time, so we've picked older names. I also didn't want the names to be too popular, David being the only exception. David will probably always be a little popular but when your kid is David 5th you can't really argue with that!
Anyways, David's first reaction to my liking Violet was to tease "is this because your favorite color is purple?". I laughed because I hadn't even thought of (which surprised me I usually think of those kinds of details) but once I had I loved Violet even more! Purple, lavender, and/or Violet have been my favorite colors for almost 20 years. Also cousin Violet on Downton Abbey is awesome ;) I absolutely love her character and how she is actually OLD school. I have a friend in the ward who was due a day before me who liked the name, and I didn't want to pick a name that was too popular (especially in the same Ward).
Then David basically refused to truly weigh in at that time and didn't until about 4 or 5 weeks before Violet was born! Big stinker. In the meantime I poured over more baby name websites then I knew existed and our family history chart like I never had before. And while I found lots and LOTS of names I liked, however none of them stuck out or fit. There were also tons of family names I liked that are already currently in use on both sides of our families.
Maybe this sounds bad but her name is also the first and only baby name I have ever prayed about. With Davie and Macy, I just KNEW it was right, the family connections were just wonderful. Their names were perfectly planned no endless searching or arguing. None. David and I had a list of about 4 Boy names and 4 girl names (in a seniority order) completely planned way before their conception and I never questioned it.
About 2 or 3 weeks before she was born, we decided to do something we had never done before, wait until she arrived before we truly decided! That was more cautionary than anything, I had been consistently calling her Violet since mid March, haha and my sister in law and mom had been since December (they let me know their votes early). Needless to say I was both glad and relieved when she finally arrived. Violet is perfect for her. In the end I liked our little naming journey, even though it completely threw me off guard and was a little stressful. Violet may be baby #3 but she definitely has her own little story.
Violet truly is our delicate little flower. She beat Davie's smallest baby record by almost a whole pound! Her tiny little fingers and toes are just adorable.
Violet also seems easier to calm and soothe so far, she doesn't full on cry most of the time and usually if I pick her up she stops. Even if I'm only picking her up to change her. Davie and Macy were definitely never better once I started to change them. In fact for Davie diaper changes (especially the first of the day) were his daily crying sessions for probably over a year. I would also say that Violet is a little more snuggly, it's nice to feel like she needs me. When Macy would cry only food would help, when Violet cries Davie and Macy can just talk to her and sometimes she will stop. It's those short little moments as a parent that make a mom so happy! Violet has even stopped a full on cry to listen to Macy sing her version of "Twinkle twinkle little star". Which is Macy singing the words "uppa, uppa high" over and over again.
All these little things make me think that maybe, just MAYBE, she will be our Vanilla baby. Also to clarify, by Vanilla I mainly mean temperament. She can be as sassy as she likes as long as she is more laid back than Davie or Macy :)
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