In 1982, when I was 3 years old, my Mom was one of those crazy Moms who stood in line for hours at Toys R Us to get me a coveted Cabbage Patch Doll. Once the store opened, she had to make a mad dash to the dolls, grab one, and make it back to the checkout before another mother tried to take it from her. She seriously told me that she saw other mothers STEALING the dolls right out from other fellow mother's carts! It's a madness that we will probably never face in today's world of pre-ordering and internet shopping. Anyways, it was my first Cabbage Patch Doll (little Cindy) and I loved her dearly. I only got to keep her a few years, though, because my mother was also one of those mothers who was so generous that she was always giving away any toys that we didn't play with on a daily basis to anyone she met that she felt was in need. But my first Cabbage Patch Doll was still a fond memory none the less.
When we became pregnant for the first time, as soon as we found out it was a girl and quickly decided on her name, I started to just casually scan the Cabbage Patch Doll shelves whenever I was in a store's toy section in search of one that was named Ellie. I thought it would be a neat keepsake for her to display and then play with when she was older. Well, I never did find one on the shelves, but I did eventually find one on good ol' Ebay. Little "Ellie Addison" now sits proudly on a shelf in Ellie's room.
I started the search again when we found out Josie was a girl. Only her name wasn't Josie then, it was Arianna. We chose Arianna somewhere in my 5th month and called her this for a little over 3 months. I again started checking the Cabbage Patches I ran across for the name Arianna and this time I actually found one! It was one of just two on the shelf of a place that generally isn't known for their toys (Gordmans).
I thought it was fate!So I took little "Arianna" home and put her in the closet for safe keeping. A few weeks before my due date, I started having doubts about the name. It all the sudden sounded too modern compared with Ellie's very traditional full name (Elizabeth). I also thought about how I would miss not having a way to shorten Arianna to a cute name like we did from Elizabeth to Ellie. I know those things seem pretty trivial, but the name really just all of the sudden didn't feel "right". So, then started the mad search for a new name. It became a complete obsession for me. I ended up buying three more baby name books (to add to my already had two from when pregnant with Ellie) and spent countless sleepless nights pouring over names and meanings in the books or on different baby name websites. I compiled list after list of favorites and drove Eric crazy asking him to look at them. I just couldn't decide on "it". Josephine never made it on any of these lists until TWO DAYS before my scheduled c/s. I had come across it several times but never thought of it as one of my favorites. I think the biggest reason was that I have a cousin who has a son named Josef (yes actually spelled that way) and so it kind of turned me off to the name. But on that next to last day for us to decide on a name (or let the baby go nameless for a while), I was once again looking at lists of baby names while Ellie was eating lunch. I found a list someone had posted on
Baby Names World of baby names that have cute nicknames and I started reading them out loud to myself to see how they sounded. It included names like Victoria/Tori, Katherine/Katie, Olivia/Liv etc. When I got to the name Josephine/Josie all of the sudden, out of nowhere, Ellie shouts "Josie! I LOVE Josie!" This was coming from a girl who had learned to completely ignore my question of "Do you think your sister should be named [insert name here]?" because I would ask her a gazillion times a day during those last few weeks. The only name she would ever say she liked was Arianna. So that fact the she (VERY emphatically) pronounced her love for the name Josie, when I wasn't even asking her, really made me think twice about the name. I realized it was perfect! Josephine was a very traditional/old fashion kind of name (like Elizabeth) that had a cute nickname of Josie (like Ellie). The meaning is "God will add/increase" which was very fitting to our growing family. And Ellie just sounded so darn cute saying it!!! :) And as for the only reason I thought I didn't care for it, well, I only see that particular cousin once every couple of years or so anyways and also I would be spelling it the traditional way.
So I had a name I all of the sudden loved but Eric still wasn't so sure about it. He had a few names that he liked, too, that I wasn't 100% for either. So on delivery day, we went in with me clutching a list of about 10 names that we hoped contained the name that just seemed perfect for the new little face we were about to meet. Well, not even a minute after our little girl was born, Eric was already calling her Josephine. I hadn't even got to see her yet but I knew it was the right name. We didn't "officially" decide until in the recovery room and there we also already started calling her Josie. It was a perfect match for her! So we brought home our little Josie and our lives became a whirlwind like you would expect with a two year old and a newborn in the house.
Fast forward four months later:
Ellie and I are in her closet looking for her piggy bank because a friend of ours gave her some pennies to put in it. It is on the top shelf and as I grab it, a box falls over into the spot it was in. I realize that it is the Arianna Cabbage Patch Doll, placed there many months earlier, and suddenly I feel guilty that I haven't even tried to find a Josie one yet. After counting out Ellie's pennies, and went to put the piggy bank back, I decided that I might as well just open the doll for Ellie to play with since it didn't have any significant meaning to us anymore. So I grabbed the box down and started to explain to Ellie that the reason I bought it was because she was named Arianna and we thought we might name her sister that and that we did the same for her and so on and so forth...and Ellie said "Let me see!". She loves to spell so I went to show her the name Arianna and when I saw it, I couldn't believe my eyes!!! Seriously, I nearly fainted. There was little Arianna, still in her box...
And here is her birth certificate...
How's THAT for fate??!!
