Mt. Rushmore

A lot of you have heard this story before, but some of you haven't and may have wondered... where did the quads get their names? Well, here's where...

First of all, Reagan's name was easy. Ages ago, before we were even pregnant, we had picked Reagan as our daughter's name, if we ever had a daughter. There is a street here in Knoxville named after Ronald Reagan (Jim's favorite president, by the way). We were driving past it one day when I happened to mention that I had a Cabbage Patch Kid named Reagan Hannah. Jim had never thought about Reagan as a girl's name, but he liked the sound of it and so did I, so we decided on Reagan right then.

Then we found out we were pregnant.
Then we found out we were having quads.
Then we found out we were having three boys and a girl.

And everyone wanted to know if their names would rhyme (Thanks anyway, Steph, for Max, Jax, Wax, and Frax) or all start with the same letter. As if remembering their names in the heat of a moment won't be hard enough!

So anyway, our girl became Reagan. Pretty much the very next day, my sister called and said, "Since you're naming the girl Reagan, and Reagan is a president, why not name them all after presidents? You can name the boys Jackson, Tyler, and Grant!"

I said, "Uh...right...sure, great idea!" and hung up on my hilarious sister and her hilarious idea. "Jim! No need to worry about names anymore! Jodie's named all our kids for us! She named them all after presidents! Ha ha ha!"

Only, Jim didn't think it was a hilarious idea. He thought it was brilliant! My patriotic, America-loving husband loved the idea of naming all his kids after American presidents. Can't say it's all that surprising!

So we looked at the names of all the presidents and decided on Jonathan (John Adams, yeah, I know, it's kind of a stretch), Zachary (Zachary Taylor), and Thomas (Thomas Jefferson).

So there's the first names. The middle names are all family names. Jonathan Carl (Carl for Jim's dad and paternal grandfather), Zachary Franklin (Franklin for my dad and paternal grandfather), Thomas Ervin (Ervin for Jim's maternal grandfather), and Reagan Leanne (Leigh is my middle name, Ann is my sister's, and Lee is a popular middle name in my maternal grandfather's family).

So, patriotic and family-oriented, that's us!

As for the title of this post, when the nurses in the NICU heard that the kids were all named after presidents, they started to affectionately refer to them as Mt. Rushmore.

The future face of a mountain!