For those of you who know me, I am Italian through and through. I eat, sleep and breathe my Italian heritage. So, when my wife and I started the discussion of having children, we traded ideas for names for both boys and girls. And, no surprise to our family, all of them were steeped in Italian culture. It wasn’t difficult to come to an agreement on the names as we have been together for more than 11 years now.

Our story began on July 1, 2003. Not long after our junior year in high school Nicole and I began to date. Our engagement began on December 18, 2008 and we were married on June 26, 2010. Then, on March 22, 2012, our lives were changed for the better when Anthony Giovanni came into the world.

The first name was a consensus between myself and Nicole while the middle name, Giovanni, comes from Nicole’s paternal grandfather. We said goodbye to ‘Pop’ in January of 2008, just months before we would enter into our engagement. Nicole and Pop were inseparable as proud and doting grandfather and star-struck granddaughter. We only felt it necessary to honor his life by naming our first son after him.

After living more than two years as the parents of one son, we received news that Nicole was pregnant with our second son. Coming up with a name for our second child was just as easy as Anthony, but it came with very heavy hearts.

Nicole tragically lost her father, Chris (Christopher), on May 3, 2013. We found out she was pregnant just months later with baby number two. During our 20-week ultrasound, we discovered that the baby was a boy. There was an immediate agreement that our second son would have the honor of being named after my late father-in-law.

Lorenzo Christopher came into the world on July 26, 2014 and is a spitting image of both my wife and my father-in-law, who will undoubtedly be a part of his life as his guardian angel. The emotions of watching two sons enter the world are overwhelming as it is, but add into it the fact that Chris was not physically present for the second birth, and the emotions can be paralyzing.

With so many people in-and-out of the delivery room and the mother-baby room, there isn’t much time to think about things. But, when you get to take Tony out for the afternoon so mommy and baby can rest, your mind starts to race. As Tony fell asleep in the car, my emotions got the best of me.

While en route to an ice cream stand, all I could think about was my father-in-law. As upsetting as it was, I know wholeheartedly that he was with Nicole and Lorenzo during the birth, making things as easy as possible and keeping both safe. Lorenzo has entered this world bearing the name of my wife’s hero and I know he is smiling down on us right now, with his parents beside him, beaming with pride at their little girl.