It's a boy!

Three weeks early and weighing 7lbs 4ozs Joshua James Hanover came into our lives at 11.15pm on Saturday 27th August 2005. He then proceeded to spend the next 24 hours doing what he seems to do best – sleeping. (Nice work if you can get it!)

Having spent a few days getting to know each other in the very capable care of Kings College Hospital we’re now all back home in E15.

Struggling to articulate my thoughts and feelings I remembered Kahlil Gibran’s masterpiece The Prophet. As he celebrates the truths of human experience he wrote wisely and ‘prophetically’ (it’s what prophets ‘do’ after all!) about children. As a fledgling father I pray I will never forget these words:

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

That's how Gibran put it. Me? I just want to say that Joshua is the most incredibly precious, beautiful and fantastic gift from God and we love him.

Oh, and he managed to wee all over his mum as I performed his first official change – ‘that’s ma boy!’