Colin William Shear

 Colin William Shear

June 14th, 2012

12:49 am

6 lbs, 10 oz

19.75 inches long

This lil' stinker has quite the birth story, but for now, you get the story of his name.  Colin means 'peaceful and calm', which is something I found I myself praying for a lot in this pregnancy and was definitely praying during his fast delivery.  I will say that so far, in his 24 hours of life, he is a calm baby.  I liked that it was a solid name that fits our "theme" of kids' names.  His middle name is after my grandfather, Lawrence William Yoder.

 

We went through a lot of names as we debated what to name this Surprise Baby.  It seemed like our list was always changing.  William was the one name we could always agree on.  We debated about using it as a first name, but we know too many Will's, Liam's and William's and I didn't want him to be called Bill or Willy.  We both also loved the name Levi, but I couldn't do Eli and Levi...sorry.  I loved the name Caleb and Ben loved Max and Charlie. A few nights before Ben was scheduled to leave for training, I sat down on the couch with our dry erase board and handed Ben a marker.  I wrote down all of the options we had ever thrown out and said that our son's name was somewhere on that board.  So we each took an eraser and wiped off the names each of us absolutely could not use. 

We took the names left and made up a list of all possible full names:
William Henry
William Lawrence
Colin William
Samuel Henry

(*please don't be offended if you really love one of these options that we didn't use*)

All of the sudden, Ben got a got a big smile on his face and said, "I think I like this one the best" and pointed to Colin William.  It was the first time I'd seen him really excited...all other names were erased and that was it.  I was waiting for excitement-something we really loved, not just something we were settling for.  Just for the record: I suggested Colin early on and presented it with all the rational reasons why it is the perfect name.  It was rejected at the time, but I just have to put it on the record that I came up with the name :)

Welcome to the family, Colin.  We are so excited you are here!