Ford McKey Shirley

We are happy to announce the name of our new baby boy . . .

Ford McKey Shirley

It's exciting to have a name for the little guy and makes me even more excited about meeting him. Rhett and I see almost eye to eye on baby names which is nice. It took us about 30 seconds to name Claire. We never had a list or anything. When we found out she was a girl we both just looked at each other and said "so I guess it's Claire Louise" and that was the end of it. We held off on telling her name but decided to mix it up this time and let his name out of the bag.
The name Stafford is a family name on my side. We wanted to call him Ford so we decided to just name him Ford instead of having it as a nick name of Stafford. Rhett is big on naming them what you are going to call them so I was fine with that. McKey (pronounced Macky) is a family name on Rhett's side. It is his middle name and his Dad's middle name which is really special to Rhett. Ford will be the third generation of McKey middle named boys and the second from father to son and father to son which really means a lot to Rhett. Rhett always felt a neat connection to his Dad since they shared that middle name and now Ford will share that bond with his Dad (and Grandfather) too!
We think that Ford is a really strong name for a little boy. It passed the presidential test (Would this name sound good if he were to become President) and the ballfield test (can you hear this name being yelled from the outfield?) so we are confident that it will serve him well. We are also glad that it will be easy to pronounce and spell which is something Rhett and I will envy (he is everything from Rick to Rex and I was always "Mee-gan Swindle"). Of course having Shirley for a last name throws people off a little bit but all of us Shirleys deal with that - just ask Dr. Shirley Rhett. HA!