Happy Birthday Post - some pics from the first year more to follow

Sibling love!

Hello, it's Amina (your sister). Our dad Mark hasn't posted since February and it's May now! Our sister Zainab and I LOVE you! Although it's hard work for mum and dad looking after you. You are a handful! Tugging (my) hair, yelling at the top of your voice, crying in bed ... but there are plenty of sweet, cute things about you that we adore. I remember when we were in Morocco. We were all familiar with the place but it was like a new planet for you! Also, you were a VERY good boy on the planes and everyone fawned over you. I remember everything in Morocco but there isn't enough space for me to type it all up!

So, bye!

From Amina xxx

I can't believe it's nearly the end of february

It is amazing - everyday and everytime I see you i can't get over how you have everything you need, and yet you are so incapable. How is it possible that you go from where you are to become so complex, with such great capaicity and ability as a fully grown human being can be? And how is it that you don't remember any of this, your ups and downs are so raw, crying, bawling, shrieking cooing, making the motorbike noise, bashing your hands and arms up and down frantically with that huge and gorgeos gring, diving into a rusk, a pear or a desperate sip of cranberry or mango juice and of course mummy breast. And what's with the fascination with media screens - you love them (and that's scary as they have multiplied in the world in the lead up to your arrival - I have no idea where this is leading). You like music, classical calms you. You like it when i dance for you (crazy daddy) to keep you amused and occupied. You like looking out of the window with me, and popping outside into the fresh air. You witnessed your first flock of birds the other day - many seagulls, ducks and canadian geese given so much bread by the p
ond. Fasciinated then scared ( there were an awfukl lot of them all around you like a hitchcock movie). You came out and joined me by the garden fire at the weekend. I have no idea how it is for you. You are so raw. You strain and feel with such intensity. You crave variety, you watch everything how is it possible you won't remember. You don't have the ability (or the awareness of your ability) to process as a memory yet. What a mystery the passing of time, you are already bigger and so different to how you were, and the memories we have are already fuzzy (which is why I must write more) and yet you are still short of 6 months. I still can't believe when i look at you you are really my son.

Hello at 3 Moons

Dear Yusuf

Me and you mum decided to write this blog so that there's something you can look at when you're old enough to read. Mum wants me to upload photos of you and to write down all the things we've been getting up to since you came into our lives. That's three months ago for the record, which means since conception (9 months in mummy's tummy) you're a year old today. Another way of looking at it is three lunar cycles since you were born. I quite like moon measurements, so happy third birthday aswell son. So mum's idea is to record all the things we get up to with you and since you've been born, and which you won't be able to remember because you're so young. It's a strange feeling, spending time with someone who's so young they don't know at all what is going on around them, someone so vulnerable and innocent and perfect and who can't do anything at all for themselves, all the while thinking that once your own parents did the same for you. And as it shall be with you, so it is with us - no memory of all the boundless grins, the cries the constant attention given. So much hard work, stress yes sometimes when we are tired, but also much more than that so much joy involved but until you have children of your own (and how much I wish for that!) you will probably not understand what I amm talking about. And there will be lots like that here in this blog, although not all of it will need you to have your own children to understand. Much of it you will get by the time you are thirteen, if not before. Mum's idea is to write about all the things you did with us but which you will never remember. And I will do that next post, I promise, starting with perhaps your birth or maybe somethings I can remember from when you were still growing in the womb. Yusuf my sweet boy who I love so much already, and yet whose personality is still almost completely unknown to me, the reason I like the idea of this blog is that it's a way of communicating with you across time, about many things, not just what happened during those amazingly obviously precious moments when you were a beautiful, such a truly beautiful little ball of magic, totally vulnerable, unclouded with human conditioning, just alive and aware, of what though you knew not. One day you may read this and feel closer to me as a result. There is a chance I will not be with you to share it with you, or that you will never see it but here it is nevertheless. Our attempt to write down for you what is happening in the time of your infancy, things we did together, but also other things that are going on in this wonderful, infuriating, absurd, beautiful and miraculous world of ours. And also, ideas. Ideas of what it means to be alive in this time, and all times. Ideas that recognise that many things are wrong about the world we live in. And then, from there ideas of what we must do to make it right. And hopefully a record of what we are already doing because I want this to be a way of introducing myself to you, and likewise your wonderful mother. So that, whatever happens we have shared with you who we are, told you the most important things that we have discovered. So that the times we were together, when you are so very young can perhaps have a double significance, the real moments we spend together with you as a 12 week old person and us as forty somethings with such busy lives, and then again the real moments you spend reading as a young man, and later a grown and experienced adult parts of what made your dad and your mum who they were. Whatever happens I hope you will enjoy this blog, that it, or better the message of love in it, will mean as much to you as you, sweet little angel mean to us.

beautiful beautiful beautiful

... beautiful boy