Bradyn Layne

Going through this pregnancy, I often refer back to my pregnancy journal/organizer that I kept while I was pregnant with Bradyn. It's quite helpful and often times hilarious to look through and reminisce on certain things; my doctor's visits, weight gain, cravings, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, fatigue, breakouts, backaches, headaches, heartburn, in addition to a whole myriad of unmentionable ailments. As I was looking through it the other day, I came across a piece of paper I had written a bunch of boy names down on in alphabetical order. After much thought and careful consideration, we jotted down our favorite first and middle names on the other side. I smiled and, yes, got somewhat sentimental :-) when I read this and thought I would share with you how we arrived at Bradyn Layne.

Our favorites:

Bradyn Luke
Brody Layne
Bradyn Layne :)
Ashton Reese
Rylan Jace
Jonathan Kai
Payton Reed
Nathan Reese
Noah Christian
Nathan Layne

Looking back on some of those, I wonder what the heck we were thinking at the time! For the most part though, we LOVE the names on this list, and if we're having another boy, we will probably use one or both of these names for him. After many days of indecisiveness and writing and saying the names over and over again, Keith was actually the one who said, "I really like Bradyn." We started referring to the baby as Bradyn Layne until one day I said, "Is that really going to be his name?.... because it's kinda starting to stick." We happily decided yes, and then of course had to figure out the best spelling combination:

Braydyn (I crossed this one out!)
Bradyn Layne ***
Brayden Layne
Braden Lane


I don't know why, but we preferred BRADYN over all the others. I guess we didn't want it to look like Hayden, Caden, Jayden, etc. We both liked the name Layne and chose the spelling with a Y in it in 'honor' of the lead singer of Alice in Chains, Layne Staley. Alice in Chains is one of Keith's favorite bands, and thanks to Keith, I am fond of them too. Besides, I knew a girl in high school who was named Lane, without the Y.

Well, I'm sure people probably don't care how we came to the (hard, difficult, agonizing!) decision of naming our child.... but when I saw that piece of paper, I cracked up. We're throwing some names around for this 2nd baby, but for now I'm not concentrating too hard on it. My foggy, cloudy, forgetful pregnancy brain has trouble working some days... a name is too much to think about so soon and such an important decision! Plus, I start baby name lists and lose them or Bradyn doodles on them. I guess we'll know in a month if we need to concentrate on boy names or girl names. :)