If there were no factors but my personal preference to consult, we would be naming our son Walker. I like that name a lot, both on its own merits and because of the great Southern writer Walker Percy, who died ten years before I read his work for the first time. I never got to thank him, and I feel like I owe him something.

But nearly seven years ago I married into the last name Wachdorf. This is not the same thing as being named, say, Anderson. With a last name like that, you can name your kid any crazy thing you want and it will come out sounding kind of respectable. No, with Wachdorf, you pretty much owe your kid a classic and preferably short first name. So for the same reasons that I had to abandon my wish to name a daughter Flannery, I had to give up on Walker. Because come on. Walker Wachdorf. How much is that kid going to get beat up on the playground?

True fact: Dan was actually willing to go through with my first choice and name our son Walker, so long as his middle name(s) could be "Texas Ranger." Walker Texas Ranger Wachdorf might not get beat up as much given his possible Chuck Norris connections, but he would almost certainly grow up to resent us pretty severely. So I passed on that generous offer.

Since that was really the only name I felt strongly about and it was off the table, it took us a while to come up with a name for the new baby. So long that I actually started feeling guilty about my complete inability to think of even one other name that I liked enough to give to my son. The good news is that while we've never had a boy, we did talk about names a lot in the months before we found out Kate was going to be a girl. The talk about what we would name a girl was pretty short, and it went like this:

Me: If we have a girl, her name will be Katherine Elizabeth and we will call her Kate.
Dan: OK. I like that.

But our boy-name conversations were more lengthy, and so it was to those conversations we returned in November when we found out that this, our second born, would be a boy. Once we picked up that thread again, Dan reminded me that the last name we had been considering for a boy was Isaac. It's funny how long ago three years can seem when in that same period of time a child who was in your womb as a completely unknown entity has learned to walk, talk and demand Gummi Bears in reward for using the potty. Three years ago sounds like a different life. Maybe a different dimension. But by squinting and concentrating really hard, I was able to ascertain that yes, Dan was right, and our last boy name candidate was Isaac. Dan said he still liked it a lot and that's what we should name the baby. I said I would think about it, and Dan knows what that means. It means we're going to be here for a while.

This is one of the major differences between Dan and I. If you want to come over some time, I could show you some impressive charts and graphs demonstrating how utterly un-alike Dan and I are in terms of how we process information and arrive at major decisions. I have these charts because my whole family did Meyers-Briggs personality type testing a few years ago. I had to laugh at mine and Dan's results, which seemed to indicate that, on paper, we are the world's most unlikely match. Take this baby-naming scenario as an example. Three years ago, Dan (ESTJ all the way) and I talked about naming a theoretical baby boy Isaac. Dan remembered that and, within five minutes of having that recollection, was able to definitively declare that there was no other name in all the world that he liked more, and that if presented with the birth certificate paperwork right there on the spot, he would name our son Isaac and never look back.

I had to think about it for a month. (INFJ, if you were wondering.) And after doing that, one random Saturday morning weeks and weeks later I told Dan that I too thought we should name the baby Isaac, and that his middle name should be Daniel, after Dan of course.

And there we have it. Our baby boy will be named Isaac Daniel Wachdorf, and I like this name very much. In the weeks that I thought about the name and let it sit with me to see if it would stick and become real, I remembered that there were reasons why we liked this name three years ago. In the Bible, Isaac is the long-promised son given to Abraham and Sarah, who are way too old to expect children, but who have nonetheless been told that God will give them descendants more numerous than the the stars in the sky. They've been waiting so long for that promise to come true that when a messenger of the Lord tells Abraham that he'll have this son within a year, Sarah overhears it and laughs. And a year later, the baby is named "Isaac," which means "laughter" in Hebrew. I love that Sarah, clearly a skeptic like me, laughs in disbelief and yet God still blesses her with a son. I identify with Sarah a lot. I would have laughed too. But I do believe that God does the things I would long ago have given up as impossible. I have seen it, like Sarah, and laughed in joy.

Perhaps the best-known biblical story concerning Isaac is of a time in Isaac's life when God tells Abraham that he must sacrifice his only son to God as a burnt offering, and Abraham is on the verge of doing so when an angel of the Lord stops him and shows Abraham a ram in the bushes nearby who can be sacrificed in Isaac's place. A few years back, Dan heard someone teach on this passage of Scripture and point out that when this event occurred Isaac carried the wood for the sacrificial fire up the mountain himself, indicating that he was stronger than Abraham and plenty old enough to know what was going on. He could have run away, but he didn't. He believed, like his father, that God would provide a substitute. That is some pretty serious faith, and that made a big impression on Dan. We want our son to be a man of faith, and we claim for him the same promises God made to Abraham about his children: "I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you." (Gen. 17:7)

As for the middle name Daniel, that's a name from the Bible too, and a good one. But most immediately in my life it's my husband's name, and that has so much meaning to me that I am grateful to have a son just so I can name him for the wonderful man I married. I think Isaac is a blessed little boy to have as loving a daddy as Dan is, and I know he'll be proud to have his name.

Not to mention it's so much better than "Texas Ranger."

So we have a name. And here are Isaac and I at 29 weeks. Eleven weeks to go.