What's Behind her Name?

I've had several people ask me how we came up with Riley's name, so I thought I'd share the story.  When Megan and I were kids, we spent a lot of time with our grandparents next door.  One of the things we loved to do was watch an old movie called Savannah Smiles with Grandpa.  

Back at the end of 2006, Grandpa got sick.  He spent Christmas and New Years in the hospital and passed away in mid-January.  During one of our visits to the hospital to see him, Megan and I stood by him and started reciting some lines from the movie.  

"Bootsie....where are you???"

"Bootsie.  I want a rubber duckie!"

"I'm so clean, I'm puckered!"  

Hearing the lines got Grandpa to respond to us a little.  It was a really special moment.  

Fast forward to later in 2007.  Jarrod and I found out we were pregnant, and while discussing names, we decided on Savannah if the baby was a girl to honor Grandpa.  But that pregnancy resulted in Gavin.  I never told anyone that we were planning to use Savannah just in case we ever had a little girl.  {Ok, that's not totally true...I did tell my grandma when she was battling cancer, because I wanted her to know that we were thinking about grandpa when prepping for the baby.}

Lo and behold, in March 2011 we found out our daughter was on the way!  We'd spent the first half of the pregnancy trying to think of boy names because we knew Savannah was on our radar for a little girl.  But after finding out the baby was in fact a girl, we had a really hard time deciding on a middle name.  Nothing seemed to be the right choice.  One night while in the car, I just started rattling off names, and told Jarrod I thought it should end in a long e sound.  Out of the blue, Savannah Riley came out of my mouth and we both looked at each other and said, "I like that."  But the more we talked about it, the more we liked Riley for a first name.  We liked that it could be shortened to Ry, like we call Gavin Gav.  I liked that it had five letters like Gavin (because I'm weird like that...).  And another thing I noticed - I found something in a magazine one day that was really cute that could be monogrammed...but only up to seven letters.  Savannah was eight.  I didn't want that to be an issue down the line.  So we started saying Riley more and more to see how it fit.

One of the things I worried about most is that Riley was too unisex of a name.  I didn't want her to be mistaken for a boy when people just saw her name.  I'd even thought of changing the spelling some to make it more 'girly,' but I wanted to be able to find monogrammed things with her name on it. I got over the unisex issue and realized that Riley was more popular for a girl than a boy now.  And we loved the name, so we went with it.

About six weeks or so before she was born, Zoe was added to our top two list.  We both really liked both names, but in the end, after she was born and laying on my chest and we kept asking each other what she looked like, I told Jarrod that I really loved the name Riley, and it was decided.  Riley Savannah was the perfect name for our perfect little girl.