It's Official...

...I have a middle name! It is Elena, my mother's name. I have always wanted a middle name - always. I love names! It is the first thing I ask new parents about their newborn children. I want to know the first, middle, and last name of every baby or child I see. I always ask people to tell me their full names. I like to hear stories of why people have certain names. You know, the story behind it. I had so much fun naming my girls. I like naming my pets - always have. I even like helping my daughters choose names for their dolls and stuffed toys. I even named my car! That will have to be under another post. Anyway, then it hit me about a year ago. I can have the perfect middle name for me. Why didn't I think of it before? I LOVE my mom's name...Elena. I really do. Why couldn't it be my middle name? Lisa Elena. I love it! I mean here I was all of these years, a person who loves names, with one simple first name...Lisa. I don't even have a fancy story to go along with it. My mom simply named me that because she was sure I would be a boy named Gilbert. She had no girls name picked out. Well, along I came and she had no name for me. So there I rested in my incubator for five days without a name. Then she decided on Lisa because it was a popular name for the time and she liked it better than Linda or Deborah I guess. That is it. She didn't believe in middle names so I didn't get one of those (neither did my sister Sylvia). Just Lisa. So I finally put it on my first official documents this evening. My teaching and administrative credentials. I had to renew them and I wrote in Elena in the middle name section. That is it! It is official and I am so elated about it. I can't wait until the hard copy arrives so I can stare at it and love it. I will forever write in Elena as my middle name or E as my middle initial. I am Lisa Elena. See...my mom did give me a middle name after all...