Three years into her life, there remains some confusion and angst (on my part)regarding the name of our youngest daughter. We had a tough time naming her, and an even tougher time making a name stick.
For all intents and purposes, her name is Olivia. That is what we call her most of the time, and what all our friends and neighbors know her as. Her official name is Paige Olivia Grace, although we have yet to send in the corrections on her birth certificate. Her legal name currently is still Grace Emily. And I still am messed up in my head about the whole thing. I feel like we really goofed big time in naming her.
She was born two weeks early, under rather stressful and emotional circumstances, and I was not in an emotionally healthy state for quite a while after she arrived. We had not yet settled on a name. I really wanted to name her Paige, but we could not come up with a middle name that we really liked with Paige. Our second pick was Olivia Jane, or Olivia Grace. When we were still in the hospital, I felt really pressured to pick a name because I didn't want her birth certificate to read "unnamed female" like Alisa's does. So we were trying to hurry and decide before we left the hospital. Dan said he really liked Grace, and we kind of settled on Grace for her middle name, but weren't sure of the first name. Paige Grace just didn't sound right, and for some reason Olivia didn't seem to feel right either. We finally just decided to go with Grace for the first name, even though I wasn't sure about it. I think Grace is a nice name, it just wasn't what I had imagined naming her, and like I said, I was seriously hormonally and emotionally deranged at the time. So anyway, we put Grace Emily on her birth certificate, and hoped I would grow to like it. We used Emily just because I always wanted to have a daughter named Emily, Dan had always vetoed it, and I figured this was my last chance, and he finally agreed.
Well, we got home, and I just couldn't get used to Grace. I kind of got obsessed about it, and started to think that it just wasn't the right name. Looking back, I realize now it wasn't the name, it was me that was not right in the head. Even though I didn't want her name to be Grace, I didn't want to change it either, because I was emotionally attached to it. After about three weeks, as the date of her blessing was approaching, and we were feeling lots of pressure because of that, and after lots of arguing and crying and emotional breakdowns on my part, we finally agreed on Olivia, mostly because it sounded okay with Grace for the middle name, and I still really wanted Grace to be in there somewhere.
So, she got blessed as Olivia Grace. And I still wasn't happy. I started threatening to change her name to Paige not too long after her blessing. Then Dan confessed that he was ready to name her Paige in the first place, but wasn't sure that is what I had wanted. The more I thought about it, the more I decided that she just should have been Paige from the beginning, but by now everybody was used to calling her Olivia. More angst.
Then, I realized she was my kid and I could still change her name to anything I wanted., no matter what people were used to calling her. By this time, Dan was understandably ready to strangle me, and pretty much agreed to whatever it would take to shut me up. So, we got a copy of the birth certificate, and got my friend Emilie to notarize it and changed it to Paige Olivia Grace. We seriously considered leaving Emily on there, but four name just seemed like too much. So, she gets called everything, and answers to everything. I call her Paige, Livvi, Gracie-grace, and Paige-aLivvi-Grace. She goes through stages where she tells people her name is Paige, right now she says her name is Owivia. I hope I haven't scarred her or damaged her self image or anything.
If I could go back in time, I would probably just leave her name as Grace. I think if I could have soldiered through the first few months, it would have grown on me, because to me, she is the living definition of grace- a gift from God. But then, she is a gift no matter what we call her.
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