We welcomed our son to the world this week! And you can definitely say he has a unique baby boy name! We're so excited to share some video of him, the birth, and of course, the backstory behind our baby boy's name reveal!
WATCH UNIQUE BABY BOY NAME REVEAL:
Oh boy where to start with this name…
I suppose some back story is relevant:
Eric and I had our baby names picked out years and years ago… we were both raised Jewish where you choose the first letter of the baby's name from a family member who passed away… So we had about 4 letters we planned on using in a combo for two kids and were really set on them.
And while we didn't end up using the exact names we thought we'd use for our daughter… when it came to our son we really thought we knew the name for years: Noah Brooks.
Only a series of events ended up unfolding over the last year and a half that made using that name impossible.
If you caught our gender reveal, you heard how I honestly thought the boy had left us and that we were going to have another daughter. I cried and cried over him at points. So you can only imagine my surprise when we got the gender results and heard it was a boy.
At that point, we felt at a total loss for naming this kid…
We decided to open the pool and name outside the family.
This was a big decision for us… Finally we decided that if the family living under our roof was really about breaking the generational and ancestral wounds/baggage, then it was okay to have a name totally out of the blue… afterall *technically* our daughter is named after my dad, who was my step dad, not biological. So we were *technically* already outside the bloodline anyway. Once that realization hit, I felt really at peace with everything.
We started tossing out names randomly all the time.
Eric kept feeling like it was a strong C. We thought about Caleb, which we loved the meaning of, but I couldn't see myself saying everyday.
We thought about Cali, which Eric didn't love but I was obsessed with the SoCal water vibes… and then we got to Cappie.
I knew Cappie needed to be short for Captain if we did it… even though I felt ridiculous when I said it. And we both had a good laugh,
“could you IMAGINE?! CAPTAIN?! What would people think?!?”
We'd laugh and laugh at all the scenarios: teachers having to roll call “Captain!” to a small child; sports teams/scenarios; and all the awkward professions that the name Captain doesn't mix with: Dr. Captain…
Yet we couldn't shake it.
What started as a joke quickly became our only contender. I started Googling, “what's wrong with naming your kid Captain?”
And the more I read other perspectives, the more I loved it.
The more we sat on it, the more we loved it.
We both love the TV Show Greek, and the main character is Cappie, short for Captain. When we'd both envision our son, he has some serious overlap with that character… funny, witty, charismatic, super smart, creative, and super loyal.
Captain is also another nod to my dad who passed away, and taught me everything I know about the water from buying my first surfboard to how to boat. In fact, the day I'm writing this post, 6/1 is the anniversary of his death. I've spent the looking at old photos of him on his boat, and someone had commented “this is how you'll be remembered.”
Plus of course, the famous scene in Dead Poets Society (which of course came out this very month the year I was born) where the students quote the Walt Whitman poem, “Oh Captain, My Captain!” to their fallen professor played by Robin Williams.
My dad LOVED Robin Williams (I mean who didn't?) and he LOVED that movie and he LOVED LOVED LOVED getting me to watch old movies with him. He would always quote that. And while I definitely had a moment of pause naming my kid after a poem where the leader dies, I also recognize that sacrifice is part of life and that parts of who we were are constantly dying off in order to make room for more wins/victories/beauty/fill in the blank.
That's life. We can't move forward and evolve if we're holding onto the past. So while we don't literally need to die in order to achieve or goals, we do need to evolve, which is a form of death IMO.
Anywayyy
We still felt a connection to the N, but knew it wouldn't be Noah. The N is actually for Eric's grandpa who passed away. We both kind of said we liked Nathaniel. I looked it up and it means “god given.”
“Captain Nathaniel, god given leader.”
just felt right.
We also had a laugh that it was yet another teen drama character: Nathaniel Archibald. We've watched Greek and Gossip Girl multiple times in our relationship so it felt fitting. Eric has always loved/related to Nate, and so have I. We love how he went from a floating through life stoner, underachieving stoner boy to the most moral and trustworthy of all the characters. He had his values and stuck to them, even when others weren't happy about it.
He learned from others mistakes (and of course his own) and was able to love the people in his life, while not enabling or caving into them. We also love how his character broke ancestral wounds, and of course the irony of those wounds being tied to his father, the Captain, isn't lost on us.
We love that his name gives room for him to constantly reinvent himself. As a baby, we plan to call him Cappie, though I've taken to calling him Captain. We know others will feel more comfortable calling him Nat, Nate, or Nathan. He really can do whatever he wants with it, and it makes us smile everytime we say it.
And sinceee I've only glossed over it, but there was so much magic in R's due date/birth date that I wanted to share this about Cappie's:
June has always been an interesting month for me. On some level, I always knew I'd have a June baby. In our Pregnancy Vlog, E even said, “you knew you'd get pregnant in September and have a June baby!”
Then my dad passed away on 6/1, and that year Father's Day fell on my birthday. I've had a hard time feeling joy around Father's Day and my birthday after that if I'm honest. When I got my first due date, I knew it was too early. When they moved it later in the month 6/17, I knew it was still too early. This boy has always felt like a Cancer boy. I LOVE Cancer boys. My first love was a Cancer boy born a week after me, one of my best guy friends in college had the same birthday as me. I knew this kid wasn't coming before 6/21.
Captain Nathaniel Dresdale we love you! You've already shown us patience, flexibility, and more love than we could imagine!
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