Now that Mercy Jane is six months old (as of yesterday!) perhaps she should have a proper introduction!
In the early weeks of pregnancy, I was feeling a measure of anxiety about having no ideas about boy names. Most people would have had a boy name they were saving by now, but not us! John and I finally sat down and seriously discussed this, came up with a few leading options, and then went to our ultrasound and got a glimpse of daughter #3! Girls are pretty comfortable for me now, so I was not in the least disappointed, but now we had to come up with a new name.
We knew we wanted to honor my grandma somehow. She was having some health scares and was often in our hearts. I had a full name picked out which reminded me of Grandma and which I loved, but John simply wasn't crazy about it. I won't share it yet because we still might use it if we had a fourth daughter (remember, sweetie? 😉). For many weeks, though, I called my belly by that name until landing on Violet for a while. We both liked it, but weren't ready to commit. (I even floated Garnet for a middle name, but all John had to say was "darn it!" and it was cut!)
Grandma passed into glory In October. Mom called me and I texted John at work to tell him, and he texted back "We can name the baby 'Janet Marie.'" Do you know how much I loved him for that? We didn't, though, mostly because we didn't think it sounded great with our last name. That's also one of the reasons we didn't use Violet.
Well, Thanksgiving came and we still hadn't settled on a name. I was 38 weeks and convinced that I would once again go late, but two days later, my water broke! As John and I stared at each other in the labor room a few hours later, waiting for contractions to start, we finally settled it. "Mercy" was on the short list of favorites in my phone and John had come back to it a few times, We'd first seen it used as a name in Pilgrim's Progress, one of my favorite books. The meaning is evident, and it fit our requirements of being unusual but with an easy standard spelling. It also sounded well with Jane, which is a common variation of Janet, and how we agreed to name her for Grandma.
The literal meaning of "Mercy Jane" is "Mercy, God is gracious"--excellent in itself. Her namesakes hold the most significant meaning to us, though. Janet Marie, my Grandma Smith, gentle, God-fearing academic-turned-devoted-wife and mother of eight, is the grandparent I most take after, and I would be honored for Mercy Jane to take after her, as well. And while I love the Pilgrim's Progress illusion as well, the Puritanical feel to her name is even more fitting since she was born 10 days early and will have a Thanksgiving birthday now and then. Our early little Mercy from God.
She has firmly cemented herself into our family as the roundest and happiest of our babies so far. She finally started grabbing her toes and rolling over from her back to her tummy just last week, a few days after flipping from tummy to back for the first time. She started babbling around the time of my dad's birthday on May 7 and is quite possibly going to be our easiest to sleep-train, since daddy worked her through the four month sleep regression with no tears. (Too bad we waited until she was 5.5 months to do that! Actually, though, those two months of cosleeping were pretty cozy, so maybe it's not too bad.)
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