C.N.B.

Several people have made it their mission to figure out what C.N.B. stands for. As we have said all along, even if you guess it, we are not going to tell you it's right! I will tell you the story that is behind the name though. Nathan and I have always had a hard time trying to pick out names for girls. Boys, no sweat. We have several of those names but a girl, that is another story! When I was pregnant with Hope, her name just fell into place. We had been trying to come up with a girl name for weeks (of course we had a boy name already) but a girl name was so elusive to us. We still had not 100% decided on one when the signs of a healthy pregnancy started leaving us. Every time we went to the doctor, it was always the same thing... I hope this test comes back normal, I hope that they are wrong and the second opinion will be better, I hope her heart defect is not as bad as they think, I hope that the Downs has not had an impact on her organs... Of course for everything that was said, there was always an "I hope" in there. As we pulled into the driveway one night after a long day at Duke Peds, Nathan said "I have called her Hope all day". I simply said, "Me too". And so, Hope had her name. Noelle came from one of my favorite Christmas songs, we just changed the spelling from Noel to Noelle.

This pregnancy has not been nearly as eventful so we did not have a name that just came to us this time. In the end though, it ended up the same way as with Hope... Nathan picked the first name and I picked the middle name. I walked into the den one night with the name book waiting for the Carolina and N.C. State game to start... When we started dating, Nathan did not have a ACC team that he pulled for. Being from the mid west, he had no school loyalty and decided that he was going to pull for UNC instead of State or Duke just to be the odd ball out in the family. My father and brother went to NCSU and I did my undergrad and some of my grad work at NCSU while my mother went to Duke. Needless to say, there was no Carolina blue around us till Nathan and boy oh boy, what a fan he has become. As you can imagine, the games get quite interesting around here when the teams play!! On this particular night, we were waiting for the game to start and I sat down in a chair across from the Christmas tree while Nathan was channel surfing. I was very focused and determined to find a name (at this point we had already found out it was another girl) and only had about 20 minuets before the game started. We had a list of 3 names, Chloe, Lane, and Luca. I already know several Laney's, Nathan wasn't sold on Chloe, and Luca was not something either of us was sold on but was the one we most agreed on at that point. Out of the blue, Nathan says "What about C...?" I tossed it around in my head, not quite sold on it, but I really liked it. As I learned the meaning of the name, I really really liked it. It took me about 10 minuets to figure out that Nathan had found another game on TV for a team that we root pretty hard for... one of their players has this name. Once I figured out where he got the name, I was sold. Double meaning... First, she has a name sake and second, it is SO VERY fitting for our journey these past few years with our dreams to have a child. Once we got the "C" we decided to have the middle name start with an "N" so that she would have our initials... "C" for Christy, "N" for Nathan, and of course the "B" is our last name. The "N" is a name that I have always loved... I fell in love with it when I was watching a Drew Barrymore movie and this was the "name" of the character she played... While both girl's have the "N" as a middle name, they do not share the same name....