Yup! Baby Number four was born on Monday, March 13, 2006. She has dark hair and olive colored skin. She is a good baby - sleeping lots and eating well.

Why did we name her Maria? Well…here goes. I went to the hospital for high blood pressure the night before she was born. As I lay awake shaking with a headache due to complications and the medicine they gave me, I watched PBS. They had a special on called ‘Celtic Women’ and it was 4 ladies who were singing Celtic songs like ‘Danny Boy’ and others of the sort. At about 4 am a lady sang ‘Ave Maria’, which happens to be my grandmother’s favorite song. As she is no longer with us, of course this song makes me cry. I wondered, however, why was this song on an Irish song show? Isn’t it in Italian or something?? Weird.

Well, Maria was born and I was sent to recovery and then back to my room afterwards. I didn’t get to meet her until 11am when Steve rolled her in from the nursery.

I took one look at her, and burst into tears. She looked exactly like my maternal grandmother and she even resembled me some! I was overwhelmed and immediately knew she had to be named Maria after my grandmother. Of course, Elisa is also named after my grandmother but in actuality my grandmother went by ‘Alice’ which is my middle name. Either way, from the night before and after seeing her precious face, I knew her name had to be Maria. I had already decided we would name a girl after Jacquie, Steve’s mom, if we had one, because she deserved it and we should carry on all the names we could - so that is how she got her name, Maria Jacqueline Coyle.

It took Elisa a few days to get the hang of calling her Maria because she really wanted to name her ‘Emma’. But, we have all settled in to her being Maria and just love and adore her very much. Welcome Baby Maria!