Your Names

Dear Kate and Riley,

I thought you might want to know how you got your names. Dad and I were surprised at how hard it was to name both of you, we thought that with two of you it would be easy since we wouldn't have to narrow it down to one, but instead it was hard to find two names that "went" together but didn't rhyme or start with the same letter (my rules). Before we knew you were girls we thought of a lot of boy names, I liked Andrew and Zachary (Drew and Zach) but after a little while I knew you would be girls and then we found out you were for sure so we were on to girl names. I thought I had decided right away, Katherine and Elizabeth. I always thought my first daughter would be named Katherine Elizabeth so it made sense to me to just split them up. But dad wasn't on board. We spent weeks searching through baby name books. I always knew I wanted a Katie so that was pretty set. The question was what would Katie be short for, we went through Katherine, Katelyn and finally settled on Kate. I liked it because it was simple and I could still have my Katie. Even though we didn't really say who would be Kate, I knew it would have to be baby A since technically, you would be my first daughter even if only by a few minutes.
Riley's name was much harder to come up with. I was still pushing for Elizabeth and use Libby for short. I still might use that for one of your sisters some day. Dad wasn't sure about that. So after many nights of me going through name books and yelling out names only to have your dad make a bad face about EVERY name, I finally told him, FINE, YOU come up with a name! So then Dad started going through the books. I was glad he was getting involved and he realized it WAS hard to pick out a name! Then one night he said, "What about Riley" I said I thought I could like it and it pretty much stuck.
We started telling people your names a few weeks before Thanksgiving. I liked calling you by name and since I knew where you were in my belly I liked knowing if Kate was moving or Riley was. Then it was time to think of middle names.
Dad came up with Riley Lynn, I thought it was cute and since Dad's Grandpa's name is Lynn it was good. With Kate we struggled. We couldn't find anything that went well with Kate for a middle name. I thought it should start with an "e" so we went through a lot of E names. Then over Thanksgiving Aunt Jill was filling out a family tree to give as a gift for Christmas. We saw that dad's grandma Chris' real name was Evelyn. We decided that would be good and since it was Grandpa Lynn's wife it only made sense.
So when they asked us in the hospital if we had named you dad and I looked at each other for a second and I think the nurse was surprised that I didn't even have to think twice before I said A is Kate Evelyn and B is Riley Lynn. I love that each of us picked one name. I wonder if you had been here if one of you would have been more of a mama's girl and one more of a daddy's girl. I know daddy wanted you BOTH to be daddy's girl and play sports. But you probably would have inherited your mother's lack of athletic talent at all. Lucky for you, I think in Heaven you get to be good at everything.
love,
Mom