What's in a name??

Well if any of you know me well, you know I have a VERY hard time making decisions! :) So just like anything else, I (we) couldnt make a decision on our sweet little girls name! Jeff kind of wanted to wait until we saw her picture. I on the other hand, did not! I liked having a name pretty early in the pregnancy with all my boys and I wanted the same with this adoption. I really like to be able to think about my unborn (or adopted) children by their name.
So we had it narrowed down to 2 names. Mia or Annakate. We were going to use her chinese name as her middle name for sure. We wanted to keep a part of her name with her! We had loved each of these 2 names and for about 8 months or so went back and forth weekly on which name we liked better. This time, we let friends and family in on our two names and we got lots of comments from the peanut gallery! :) In fact some of my friends just called her Annakate. (that is the one I was always leaning toward)
Then one day I was reading a blog from anther family who had adopted from China and they named their little girl Meili. I thought it was really cute and sent an email to Jeff that I really liked it. As I thought about if for a few hours and realized the meaning behind the name...I just KNEW that was it. It felt so right and I was completely at peace with it. Unlike the other two names. In mandarin, the word mei mei means sister. How perfect! She is the only sister in the Lloyd family! Also I later found out that just one Mei means beautiful! :) And that she is!  I loved that the leigh part of the name (or Li for the way the other family spelled it) was my middle name.  Her name was different and had so much meaning! So Mayleigh it is! :)
The spelling was hard to decide. I wanted to do the mandarin spelling of Mei but we got some feedback that it would be hard for people to figure out how to pronounce that spelling so we decided on May and  spelling Leigh like I spelled my middle name. We thought this was the easiest, most straight forward spelling for people to pronounce it right, but of course people still have had trouble! ;) The easiest way to describe it is like Bailey with an M. Maybe we should have spelled it Mailey! :)
So a few months later we get her referral and were so excited (and shocked) to see that her name is Mei Wei. And there was the peace that I had when we chose her name a few months before! Pretty amazing stuff! God really has his hand on this adoption!
Mayleigh Wei it is! Perfect! :)