Melody's Name

My friend April asked how we picked Melody's name and I finally want to answer that question! As many of you know, we got Julie's name by rearranging the letters in her Chinese name (switch the L and the J in LuJie and you get Julie). We were secretly hoping that we could do the same thing with our second daughter, but it just didn't work. No matter how we arranged the letters in SiWei, we couldn't come up with anything. I had the idea of changing her last name, Jiang, by flipping the final "g" upside down to make it look like an "a," resulting in "Jiana" (usually spelled Gianna). In addition to that idea, I printed out the list of names I have had on my computer since before we adopted Julie. Larry took the list and picked his favorite ones. That gave us a "short list" to ponder. We finally narrowed it down to Jiana or Melody, but we couldn't seem to settle. One of us would like one option while the other liked the other option, then we'd flip flop. We liked that Jiana was tied to her Chinese name but we liked the sound of Melody. Melody would also be easier for people to pronounce and spell correctly. In addition, every time I looked at our referral pictures, Melody would pop into my mind. It seemed to suit her somehow. Larry and I both liked that it sounded "happy" and also had a musical element to it. We knew we wanted Joy to be her middle name, and "Melody Joy" sounded beautiful to us. After several days of deliberations, we finally settled the matter and went with Melody Joy. We are sure that she will, indeed, bring a melody of joy into our lives, and we pray that we can do the same for her.