First of all, thank you all for your kind words on my birth story.

I finally put my sweet, stubborn boy down to write another blog post. Well not really, he is right next to me but I will get better at blogging with baby. I wanted to finally share a little bit about Jackson’s name. The name Jackson was actual an easy pick. We did have a long list of names that included Miles, Harrison, and Henri but it was always Jackson. When Reggie and I were in college and had just started dating, we started talking about our future. We both knew we wanted to have babies with each other, probably before we decided we would get married. So when we did daydream about the day we would become parents together, we would talk about names. Early on Reggie told me he loved the name Jackson because of Jackson Pollock. Fun fact: Reggie majored in Art in college (he is a very talented) and aside from our love of babies, we also share a love of art. So fast forward to when we found out we were going to have a baby boy we came up with lots of potential baby names but our favorite was always Jackson. It just made sense.

His middle name, as you know, was a bit trickier. Originally we were going to use Kalama only as his middle name because that was the name featured in my dream. After some more research, Reggie and I knew the name needed some tweaking. We loved that the name Kalama meant light or torch but the name needed more personalization. The last couple years in my family have been trying and very stressful with various health problems and I loved how the meaning could be construed as “away from the darkness.” But we also wanted the meaning to include the type of man we wanted Jackson to be. A thoughtful leader. We conveyed our desire to some family members who speak fluent Hawaiian. In the end, the name we decided upon was Kalamaku’okano’eau (Kah-lah-mah/coo-oh-kah/no/eh-ow) literally meaning “torch of knowledge.” Immediately, when Reggie’s cousin explained to me the meaning, I knew it was the perfect name. So there you have it. It is a very long, complicated name but when I think of the meaning, I get the chills.

xo