The Name Game

This post is dedicated to the names of the little ones we already love so much.  When we first found out we were pregnant Cole (like any man) wanted boys.  He envisioned them playing football together; one quarterback one receiver, a non stoppable team. I said I didn’t care but secretly wanted girls.  I think I knew that two girls were the only way I might ever get Cole to attempt a third child and since I have a sister and a brother, whom I cherish, I thought three was the perfect number.  All this said healthy babies were more important to us than gender and we knew no matter what we would love them unconditionally. 

Cole quickly started the name game.  I never knew if he was serious or joking!  If you know Cole his main objective was probably to make me laugh or see how fast he could get my blood boiling!  He started with Waylon and Willie.  It made perfect sense to him since we had gotten married in Luckenbach TX.  He often sang the very popular country and western song.  He then moved on to Rocky and Rudy after two of his favorite movies.  He thought it would be cool for them to have their own theme songs and again sang them often.  I can’t tell you how many times we watched these movies!    

Camden at 30 weeks



Kimberlyn at 30 weeks



After finding out we had the best of both worlds: one boy one girl we started a name list.  Any name that neither of us totally hated went on the list.  Being a teacher it was hard to hear a name without associating it to a child I had had in class.  Most of Cole’s names had something to do with guns or hunting and most of my names had to do with Texas towns or rivers.  We always seemed to go back to the C or K names.  After making a list and checking it twice we came up with Camden Rock Cantwell and Kimberlyn Dawn Cantwell (neither of which I had had in school!).  We both agreed to Camden pretty quickly and ever since I had said heck no to Rocky Cole had shortened it down to Rock; he had been calling his baby boy Rock for months now and it just seemed wrong to change it.  Cole actually came up with Kimber all by himself (of course it is the name of some gun) but I wasn’t completely sold on it.  After watching the college track finals on ESPN and hearing the name Kimberlyn I was in love.  My mom, dad, sister, and myself all have the middle name Lynn and we could call her Kimber for short.  Dawn is the girly spelling of Don my Granddad, an amazing man who loss his battle to cancer when I was in high school.