What's in a name?

Most people find a family name to give their child. Some look for baby name books and go with whatever is popular on the list for the season. Others find names from movies or books or just whatever seems to grab their attention over the years. For Jeff and I, we've had a girl name picked out since we were dating back in . . . 1990? The name was Evie. We heard the name on a Charmin toilet paper commercial and fell in love with it. In the commercial, this little girl was going to the bathroom when she decides to pull the entire roll off the bolt. Her mom comes in the room and finds her with oodles of toilet paper everywhere and says 'Oh - Evie!' For some reason that name has stuck with us over all these years and we always thought (if we ever did have kids) that we would have a girl. That name, Evie, didn't necessarily have special meaning other than we've just always liked the name. Nothing wrong with that. Throughout the pregnancy Jeff and I became much more aware of how popular the 'E' names were and started second guessing that name . . . thinking we'd really like something more unique and more . . . 'us'. Well, as everyone now knows, we have a boy and we were able to come up with a perfect name that fit us perfectly.

During my first trimester of pregnancy it dawned on us one day that we may not be having a girl. It very well could be a boy and we had zero names for that. Jeff and I rarely agree on names when it ever would come up so we decided we'd better start thinking of some names for the just in case. I guess it was within a few weeks that we were in the car and Jeff says to me, 'So I've been thinking about the boy name...Serif'. Now at first I thought hmmm...not sure. He then began explaining to me how he came up with the name. After hearing his explanation I thought it was genius and the more I thought about it the more I grew to absolutely LOVE it and thought, 'It's perfect!'.

So . . . here's the explanation:
As you all know, Jeff is a graphic designer. He loves type and it plays a major role in what he creates. In typography there are 2 basic classifications of letterforms, Serif and Sans Serif. a sans serif is when a letter is in it's simplest form with not a lot of fuss or additional features. A Serif is a creative little mark added to the letterforms. Notice the little details on the top and bottom of the "S" and the bottom of "rif"? Those are serifs.

In our relationship of 18 years (4 dating & 14 married) we have always been Sans Serif. This little guy, Serif, is now our little addition. He's the addition that adds that creative little flare to our family just as it does with letterforms. So that's the concept behind his name and why we enjoy it so much. It's just . . . us.

murmur update

serif is going to be fine. there is a small hole in between his left and right ventricles allowing blood to go through. it's not going to get bigger though and will most likely go away as he and his heart grows. there's no limit to his activity either as he gets older. the doctor wants to see him again in six months just as a follow up.

thanks for your prayers. the photos below are from the last day in the hospital

j m & s

murmur prayers

serif had a doctors appointment this morning, just as a follow up since we're newbies. he checked out really good except his little heart murmur is still there. the doctor wanted us to set up an appointment with a pediatric cardiologist which is happening tomorrow morning. they'll do an ultrasound on him to better find out what going on and if it's something to just monitor or treat.

prayers (for mom and dad too) are much appreciated.

more pics coming soon. i promise.

j m & s

pictures can be deceiving

so stinkin' cute here, huh? don't let the little chubby armed, hallmark moment fool you, friday night was crazy! all went well until early evening. Serif had been good all day, he "ate" in the late afternoon, evening came around and he seemed hungry again. he basically ended up using michelle as a pacifier, doing fine as long as he was attached but would let out horrific screams, almost like he was angry, when he/we would pull away. put him back he was fine. this went on for almost an hour and a half. he'd start to eat then fall asleep so we put him in the bassinet so we could get rest. the little guy would stay asleep for a few minutes and then get fussy. after a couple of hours of this the nursery came down and we decided to let them have a shot at it so we could rest. 4 hours later we were awaken by the nursery with a perfectly content, sound asleep little boy.

hopefully we're going home today but boy would it be nice to take one of those nursery gals home. they have some sort of magic touch.

turns out the magic touch was food. they fed him a little through a syringe and he went sound asleep. i guess he's not getting enough quite yet from mom. it'll come though. they assure us it'll come.

the picture above was taken in between screams. simply beautiful. i'm sure we'll remember these moments a lot more than the fussy ones.

j m & s

nice fauxhawk

photos

http://flickr.com/photos/osj/

mom and baby are doing fine this morning. michelle just got out of the shower and serif is getting the ole snip snip downstairs. ouch!

j

meet serif

mom and baby are doing fine. really, really smooth labor and birth (thank you god!).

labor started about 9 this morning, started pushing about 1:40 and baby popped out a little after 2.

everyone is doing fine.

here's the stats:
8lbs 4 oz
22" long
popped at 2:24pm

j m and s

more to come later