Decisions, Decisons!

Joy, Faith, Abigale, Dana, Dhura, Asha, Patricia Dianne, Authority, Gabi, Annie and Melani. Thank you for this sampling of suggested names for our baby girl. They are all wonderful. But as Pat and I discovered, choosing the right name was harder then it seems.

There were several names we chose during the long wait that we liked, but that changed the day we saw her tiny face for the first time. Captured in the millisecond of time it took to snap that photograph a glimpse of a real baby's personality was revealed to us. We were faced with our first parental responsibility...giving her a name. I hope we got it right!

She is Devi Rose Bhargabi Ross. Devi is a Hindi name which means goddess. We liked the "D" sound and it goes nicely with our nickname Deedee after my mother. It was in one of mom's last lucid moments that I shared this idea with her and with a raise of her eyebrows and an unforgettable stare, I knew she was pleased.

Rose is to honor Patrick's great aunt Rose. Aunt Rose is now in heaven, but she was a strong woman in her day; a real go-getter. She played basketball in long skirts long before sports for women was common and hiked clear to the top of Pike's Peak! She was happily married to a man named Henry, but never had children of her own. Instead, it is said that she adopted many children in her chosen field. She was a school teacher who taught first in a one room school house in Poverty Gulch, CO, later becoming a principal in Wheatridge, CO. This school was eventually named and still is known as Rose A. Stein Elementary.

We kept Bhargabi because it was the first thing ever given to her and it is hers to keep.

During this process of trying out names, we yelled them out in stern voices, and whispered them soft tones. We wrote it down; tried shortened versions of it; moved the names around. Will the acronym look good on a towel? a brief case? Lord help us! I hope as we go along that we will become better at decision making :)