It's all in the name...

(This post has been written for a while and I fully intended on posting it after we passed through court, but I'm getting tired of referring to the boys on the blog as "the little one" and "the big one", plus 99% of you already know the boy's names, so it's not like it's a great mystery...so I will proceed...)

So, a little history on the boys names and how we came to a decision about the names. First and foremost, we have always wanted their given Ethiopian names to remain a part of their legal Cook names whether as their first or middle names. This allows them to keep part of their Ethiopian heritage and if they desire, be called by their Ethiopian name if they want as they get older. We ultimately decided to give each boy an English first name and keep their Ethiopian names as their middle names. Both of their first names are family names, making their names and entrance into our families even more special! Drum roll, please...........

• Charles Nuredin
• Samuel Edasso

Charles (or Charlie, as we plan to call him) is named after my grandfather, Charles Thomas, who was thrilled at the concept of his great grandson being named after him! Samuel (or Sam) was picked by Kenny primarily from the story in the Bible about Hannah & Samuel, but without previous knowledge that Samuel was also my great grandfather's name, Samuel Clifton. Another cool fact...the current birthday listed for both boys is March 11, which also happens to be my grandfathers birthday! (And the birth month of literally half of our families...what's 2 more birthdays when you already have 27??) Just a little confirmation that these were our boys and needed to bear their grandfather's names!!

Charles means "man" and has English, French and German origins. Samuel means "God hears" and has Israeli and Hebrew origins. And try as I might, I haven't been able to find ANYTHING on the the boys Ethiopian names!! (And to add to the confusion, we've seen Edasso's name spelled no less than 3 different ways!)

And please, no grief from my child development counterparts...I know you shouldn't try to change a kid's name when they are used to responding to something else all their lives. My reasoning is that everything else will be new...what's one more new thing?? And we will definitely be doing this as a slow transition or who knows...they may not respond at all to Charlie & Sam and we will have Nuredin & Edasso, which is totally fine, too!!

Now you have names...so just put the two most adorable faces you can imagine with those names and there you have Charlie & Sam!!