Awesome News! It’s a Party of Four!

Hello, financial freedom lovers!

We haven’t blogged in over two months, which is incredible given that we were posting on a weekly basis. A lot has been going on in our lives lately. Aside from the hurricane aftermath, great things happened to us, especially this month.

We welcomed our second daughter on December 2nd, at 4:39 a.m.

That’s right, we’re proud parents of another girl, and everyone in the house, including the older sister, is going goo goo gaga. Mom and daughter are doing well, and labor was a record-breaking (for us) 2.5 hours. This is significant since our first child’s labor lasted 36 hours!

This was the big surprise I hinted at a few times on the blog this year. Remember how I took a trip with my daughter to the Dominican Republic back in September and wifey didn’t come? This was the main reason. Considering that she was approaching the third trimester, we didn’t want her to travel.

This is also why it’s been difficult to blog recently, as we took time to nest and are now busy with our newborn.

Okay, so we could have spent some time blogging, but why put us through an unnecessary schedule regime when we have other priorities?

This is why, in the absence of a job, we manage our time so that we can do whatever we want. We can fully utilize our unlimited PTO for what matters most at the moment.

What a blessing it has been to be able to raise our daughters without any time restrictions at home. Our independence in creating our own schedules has been crucial.

It’s been simply awesome, awesome, awesome!

Our daughter’s names

So, in the past, we kept our first daughter’s name off the blog. There were a few reasons for this, but the main one was that we had jobs when she was born and didn’t want to reveal our identities to our employer in case they found our blog.

My boss and team eventually found out about us through this interview on MarketWatch, which was both awkward and funny. I think a blog post would be appropriate given the looks on my coworkers’ faces and the questions that were asked. Oh my…. If there are enough comments below requesting a post on it, I’ll write it!

So go ahead and comment below. It only takes a few minutes, so don’t be a cheapskate when leaving comments!

Anyway, I believe it is now appropriate to refer to them by their lovely names.

Let’s begin with the four-year-old! Her name is a combination of the names of her two grandmothers. Tatiana’s mother’s name is Irina, and my mother’s name is Julia.

We came up with the name Juna by combining the first two letters of my mother’s name and the last two letters of Tatiana’s mother’s name.

However, we didn’t like the way the Spanish pronunciation of Ju, which is “Hu,” sounded. Huna?

Also, the English version wasn’t any better.

Then Tatiana went back to her roots for inspiration. She realized that Julia is Yulia in Russian. As a result, we took the Yu from the Russian name and turned Juna into Yuna.

That’s it!

We fell in love with the name right away.

The name was a tribute to our mothers and had other meanings we liked. For example, we enjoy watching Korean dramas, and the name Yu-Na sounds like a Korean name.

We appreciate originality, and the name is not widely used. We only know of Yuna, a major river in the Dominican Republic, and a Malaysian singer.

The name also means kindness. Yuna has lived up to her name by being a very sweet and kind child.

We didn’t find out the gender of Yuna until she was born because we wanted it to be a surprise for us. However, we wanted to know the sex of our second child for a couple of reasons. First, Yuna thought she was going to have a brother, and we wanted to set the right expectations to minimize any negative emotions when the baby was born.

Second, we wanted to know whether we should buy boys’ clothes or keep Yuna’s clothes. Tatiana has been saving some of her best clothing for just such an occasion.

It worked out well because we had time to change Yuna’s expectations and plant the idea of how wonderful it would be to have a sister with whom she could play and participate in some activities better than with boys.

It’s strange, but we never had many boy names but always had favorite girl names. So, when we did the gender reveal in July and found out we were having a girl, we had more names to choose from.

We have a sort of criteria for selecting names: the pronunciation must sound good in English, Russian, and Spanish. It must be brief so that no nicknames are required. We are also wary of names that may have a different meaning in another language and thus become a bullying theme.

We also don’t have to worry about a middle name because we use Tatiana’s last name as their middle name, incorporating both of our surnames. The full names represent made in the United States of America with fabric imported from the Dominican Republic and Belarus. 🙂

How our second daughter was named

I swear to God that sometimes my wife and I communicate telepathically. I keep a list of names on my phone. Alina was quickly becoming my favorite on that list. My wife’s best childhood friend is also Lena.

I don’t recall exactly how the naming discussion went. We attempted to match people’s names, but nothing matched.

Should we try combining grandparents’ names by using our previous formula?

Jole and Lejo are both unappealing. This formula had served its purpose. LOL

My wife mentioned Lina somewhere in our conversation. That sounded really good to me because I liked the name Alina.

Yuna’s name was similar to Lina’s. If I was angry at them, I could yell, Yulina! Hahaha. Bring them both into the same room with one shout. LOL. Fantastic.

A ray of light came into our lives

Lina can also refer to a torch or a ray of light. What a lovely meaning. So in the end, we chose Lina.

We also have a friend named Lina from Colombia, and she is flattered that they both share the same name. After Lina was born, another Colombian friend told me that the name Lina is popular in Colombia, so go Colombia!

Our year-end holidays are even more meaningful

We are now raising two lovely daughters, Yuna and Lina. Even with the sleepless nights at the beginning, this is the best December we’ve ever had. The happiness that parenting brings into our lives is immeasurable.

And the girls share very interesting birth dates: 8/8/18 and 12/2/22. Those dates contain a lot of eights and twos and are easy for us to remember.

Lina and I were born in the same month. She will kick off December and the holiday season with her birthday, followed by my celebration on December 24th.

It’s the December couple against the Leos. 😉 Tatiana and Yuna are the house Leos.

Lina’s birthday is far enough away from Thanksgiving and my birthday to give us a break and time to prepare.

Family and close friends will simply have to make a decision in the future: do I attend their Thanksgiving celebration or Lina’s birthday?

In a good way, the FIRE journey has become more interesting. No, we do not need to return to work because we have a second child.

It simply means that we will have to work harder to direct the education of two children. We are blessed and overflowing with love.

En donde comen tres, comen cuatro.

That was the wonderful news we wanted to share. Happy Holidays, a Merry Christmas, and a Prosperous New Year to all. We hope you achieved the majority of your goals this year and are in good health.

With love, until next time, Tatiana and José