1068 Days/27w3d

So the secret is out that we're having a girl! Now the question is, what are we going to name this little beauty? It's no secret to many that Jon and I have completely opposite taste in names so while picking out names is usually a really fun part of having a baby, I'm not going to lie, I wasn't looking forward to it this time! You can read about our journey to naming Lucy here.

Surprisingly, choosing this little one's name was much easier! This time we decided that we weren't even going to think about it until after we found out whether #3 was a boy or a girl that way we would only have to look at one set of names. We found out on July 5th that we would be welcoming another girl into the family and after avoiding the subject for about a week, I finally brought it up. Jon was working at the time and asked me to show him a list of names that I liked so I started looking through the name book that we have an some baby name websites. After a few hours of this, I found that there were only a handful of names that I really loved and would want to use for our baby. This is the list that I sent him:

• Ruby
• Stella
• Olivia
• Sophia
• Aurora
• Ivy
• Juliette
• Madeline
• Harlow
• Everly
• Sienna
• Estelle
• Graciella

He immediately vetoed Ivy (pointing out that Ivy Bush could quite possibly get our daughter made fun of lol), Graciella, Harlow (I was bummed about this one because I did love it), and Sophia. So that left us with:

• Ruby
• Stella
• Olivia
• Aurora
• Juliette
• Madeline
• Everly
• Sienna
• Estelle

I had started playing around with some combinations and told him that I liked both Ruby Sienna and Ruby Estelle. He decided that he wasn't a fan of Sienna and I decided that there were also a few on the list that I didn't really love as much once I started putting certain combinations together as first and middle names. So a few more got crossed off of the list:

• Ruby
• Stella
• Aurora
• Juliette
• Everly
• Estelle

After narrowing it down further, I told him that I really liked Ruby Aurora, Ruby Estelle, Everly Aurora, and Aurora Estelle. Since not much had been said about Stella, I crossed it off of the list (which ended up being a good thing as a good friend recently announced that she will be naming her daughter Stella!) along with Juliette after finding out that, according to some name websites, at least, it meant "downy bearded." Jon must have gotten busy at work because he didn't say any more about the narrowed down list and I decided that I should probably look up the meanings of some of these names before we went any further. I already knew that Ruby meant "red", but I did find out that Aurora means "dawn" or "morning", Estelle is a variation of Stella and means "star", and sadly, Everly means "boar in the meadow." I was very bummed to find out about Everly, but I couldn't make peace with "boar" so that one was crossed off. So we were then down to a pretty small list:

• Ruby
• Aurora
• Estelle

I let Jon know why Everly had been eliminated and he agreed that he wouldn't have wanted it either after knowing the meaning. The combinations that we were left with were: Ruby Aurora (red dawn), Ruby Estelle (red star), and Aurora Estelle (dawn star). Well, if you saw the name hints in the last post, you can probably guess what the last name to leave our list was. Jon looked at all of the combinations and said that he really wasn't loving Aurora so all that was left was:

So now all of our secrets are out! We're having a girl and her name is Ruby Estelle! I love how well Ari, Lucy, and Ruby go together and I can't wait to see what resemblances she will have to her big sisters. Now that all of this is out of the way, I really cannot wait for November to be here!

Big sister helping announce her new sister's name!

Here are some more sneak peak's from our session! I will post the rest as soon as I receive the CD from our photographer. There are actually quite a few more as we did a TON of different things. Once again, our photographer exceeded my expectations and amazed me with the beautiful images she captured of our growing family.

Mama and Ruby (wow, it really feels great to call her by name)!


Ari is so excited to be earning the title of "Biggest Sister."


It's hard to believe that soon Lucy won't be my littlest one.....


Ohhhhh yes. That is finger paint on my belly. This was actually the grand finale of our session. I envisioned the girls carefully dipping their hands in the paint and placing them daintily on my little baby bump to make adorable little hand prints. Dainty is not at all how I would describe the way they painted my belly, but it was still a lot fun and the girls loved it!