It means “beautiful star,” borrowing some etymological roots from a couple of places. We picked “Mei” as the root of the name because that’s what her brothers wanted. Even before we knew we were pregnant, her older brothers said, “We want a girl, and we want to name her Mei, so we can call her ‘Mei Mei.'”

And it stuck. It works with my wife’s name, April, in terms of months, and connects to Chinese and Japanese origins meaning “beautiful.” But we wanted to also connect it to the sky, as each of our boys’ names have an elemental meaning behind them. (Dante – Fire, Kota – Forests, Kai – Water)

We spent weeks researching different versions of names meaning “heaven,” “sky,” “air,” “wind,” and on and on.

Until we remembered that I’m Mexican…

Star.

Estrella.

And she’s perfect.

This means I’m going to be offline for several weeks. This actually makes me feel pretty good, that I remembered to do an “Away From Office” type post to let people know I’m gone for now. If you came here for some kind of update, don’t expect one. That doesn’t mean I won’t throw something up if I’m feeling in the mood, but I’m not holding myself to any account if I don’t update with a STATUS for this time.

This is our last baby. I want to savor it. Through all the holidays. Through all the cold nights and morning snuggles and struggles and highlights and lowlights.

AND THEN. I’ll get back to serious work.

Thanks for reading,

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E-mail: robertmichaelacosta@gmail.com