Things to give thanks for...

As those of you who read this blog already know, Thanksgiving day 2008 marked the day that we were surprised by our new baby girl! Both Shannon and I were convinced that we were going to have a boy, but as history proved once again (we both thought our first was going to be a girl...) we apparently don't have good instincts when it comes to guessing babies.

The experience of the birth was like nothing I've ever experienced before in my life. Shannon had a homebirth at .... well, home, and it was amazing! If you're interested in the full details, you'll just have to come visit us and we can tell you the whole thing. But, to sum it up, we had a wonderful home midwife who was really cool and calming. We rented a birthing tub from her and the birth actually took place in the tub. Shannon went into labor around 10:00pm the night before and got into the tub around 1:30am and baby arrived at 4:02am! My favorite moment was when, on the final push, Shannon is grunting and pushing and all of a sudden starts saying "where is it? where is it?" frantically and starts looking around and reaches into the pool and pulls out the baby! Apparently, the baby just seemed to kick off her and ended up all the way across the pool! (I'm convinced this is how Michael Phelps was born.)

Anyways, Shannon pulled her up and checked and we all found out that it was a girl! It was an amazing time and one that makes this whole "not finding out the sex of the baby until it's born" worth it, because I was just awe-struck! I mean, a GIRL? What do I know about raising a girl....of course, what did I know about raising a boy before Connor? Anyways, it was amazing.

Since we both thought that it was a boy, we had a boy's name. But, we were having troubles coming to a consensus on a girl's name. The past few weeks, we've been talking about options and creating and thinning down lists. There were names that I liked and names that Shannon liked, but nothing was really sticking. (That's why we think she was so late. She was waiting for us to find a name for her!) We knew that we wanted the middle name to be Cecilia (after my aunt), but the first name was eluding us. I can't tell you exactly what made us stick with Zoë, but there were so many things that I loved about the name. The one thing that was the sticking point was that it was only three letters long. Zoë Tam? Is that long enough? It's saving grace is that it is two syllables. Plus, the Umlaut is really badass and, as Jilly puts it, "heavy metal". However, it might prove difficult in various legal documents. I'm already trying to figure out keyboard keystrokes to get the Umlaut in various computer and internet programs...

Also, according to our many baby name books, Zoë means "a life-giving woman ; alive" and Cecilia is the "patron saint of music", which we kinda thought were cool.

Anyways, that's the short story of her name. So, lady and gentleman (I know who my readers are), please welcome to the stage...Zoë Cecilia Tam!

Of course, pictures are on http://ctam.shutterfly.com