Felicity Virginia

I never pictured myself as a girl mom. I do enjoy eye makeup and dangly earrings, but I've always fancied myself a balanced person, half tomboy, half girly. So, to say that I always imagined a backyard filled with a mix of boys and girls, isn't meant to be offensive to our girls or any girl moms, it's just true.

Sometimes, I have to stop and realize that I already am a mom. These are the days.

When naming our babes we always try to have some solid reason or connection to the names that we're going to shout, shortened, down the halls and across the yard.

As a 90s kid, I read the American Girl books. Felicity is the red-headed colonial, who steals a pair of pants from the farm hand to save a horse from abuse. I always admired her spirit, and since I wasn't allowed to wear pants myself, I felt camaraderie in her plight. One birthday, I received her life-size (as opposed to doll-size) tea cup and saucer, royal blue, sprinkled with glossy oranges, and after its maiden tea party, I rinsed it in the hose outside before carrying it up the back deck steps. I remember the fall, still. The wet, delicate tea cup sat gingerly in my open palm. The trip. The shattered bits all over the wooden planks. There was only one piece big enough to keep, and the saucer. That piece was in my memory box for years.

In college, I enjoyed the band Owl City, and the lyrics to one of their songs always stuck with me, "Let felicity fly!" I could picture the confetti showering down, and the trumpets blowing in celebration. Felicity: Intense Happiness. Let Felicity fly!

My mom's mom's mom's name was Althea Virginia. I have nothing but positive memories of her: baking, painting, and serving her family. She had toilet-trained siamese cats: a life-long goal of mine.

Of course, it's also our favorite state. Not actually, because the weather and traffic are basically the worst, but we love the people here. Virginia is home.

And finally, our stillborn son's middle name was Vir, a latin word that means, "Man, husband, hero." Back when we picked his middle name, we also loved its nod to the word Virginia, so in some ways this feels like the culmination of what we began when we named our first babe.

Welcome to the family, Felicity Virginia Nowak. We hope you're blessed with all the spunk and delight we're speaking into you.