Joaquin Sol Kirkland

Tuesday, May 26 began as a regular day. Rachel was contracting every three minutes (not unusal) and I, assured by the doctor that it would be awhile before the new little guy came along, headed up to work. Rachel had a doctor appointment scheduled for mid-day, so I left work at lunch time to take her to the doctor and watch Elijah. The 1 hour visit turned into 4 hours of fetal monitoring and the go-ahead to proceed with a C-section. So, like any family on the verge of having a baby, we swung by Sonic for a burger (which a hungry Mommy jealously had to watch Elijah and I eat).

That night (exactly 13 months from Elijah's birthday on April 26th 2008) we met our second son on May 26th, 2009.

If you've visited this blog within the last few months, you're already familiar with the name-picking dilemma we've been having ever since we found our baby was a boy. You may have even voted in one of our "name polls". Before we go any further, let me explain the story of how we discovered we were having our second little addition.

Barely 4 months after Elijah was born, I had a very special dream. It wasn't your typical "chased-by-elves-and-flying-on-a-block-of-Gouda-cheese" bizarre-ish dream. It was a dream like that which prompted Joseph to flee to Egypt with Mary and Jesus in the middle of the night. In the dream, Rachel turned to me and said these exact words, "I'm pregnant again; I think it's a boy." Then I woke up, her voice still ringing in my head. Because of the dream, we went out the next morning and, quite dubiously, bought a pregnancy test. "Surely we can't be pregnant", we thought. But with so vivid a dream, we had to lay all doubts to rest. The rest is, of course, history...and so our name search began. Early on, Rachel found that the name Joaquin meant, "established by God" and felt that it was an apropos name for such a surprise pregnancy. (After all, it took a good two years and quality accupuncture before we got pregnant with Elijah.)

Rachel knew I was never wild about the name, "Joaquin"; so, not wanting to "force-convert" me, she decided that if his name was to be "established by God", God would have to--literally--establish it Himself. Insert here the countless name polls, phoneme analyses, and unproductive name searches. I tried for so long to fill in the blank with names like Evan, Ethan, Kye, Rhett, and so on. This morning, I finally admitted to myself that his name had been Joaquin all along. And deep down, no matter how many other names I attempted to be open to, I realized God alone had established "Joaquin" as his name just as He had established the dream, the pregancy, and the child himself.

*Following our tradition of a Hebrew first name and Native American middle name, "Sol", which also nods to my family's ties to Mexico, means "sun".

The whole Kirkland Crew

Mimi, Papaw, and Uncle Bubs

Joaquin Sol
6 pounds 4 ounces
18.5 inches

Mommy and son

Praying together in the O.R.

Daddy in his birthing threads