We Have a Baby!

Iko Rey Iliana came into the world yesterday afternoon after a long teasing wait, looking fragile as a breath but weighing a healthy 8, plus a little, pounds. 

Speaking of deliriously happy...
Well done, Papa

It's been a long time since I watched a life come into the world and I forgot the primal beauty of it, promptly getting teary when there she was - all her pieces and parts blooming from just born colorless color into a rosy healthy pink like some speeded up flower unfolding into perfection. Remember that moment in the Wizard of Oz when it goes from black and white to color? It was just like that but oh so different.

See how happy she is to meet her Grandma?
After being awake more than asleep for a couple of days
I was delightedly disheveled. 

And she's crawling already. As we went in to say good night, she was lying on Elijah's chest, picking her head up and literally crawling up his body. Maybe her delayed entrance into the world gave her time to think over the places she has to go and people she has to see but we've already decided she is Olympic material at the least. Rowing for Oxford for starters. Well, for starters are all the starty things and plenty of them. Just meeting her extended family will be a marathon in itself.

Auntie Sarah meets Iko Rey,
who is obviously quite interested to meet her too.
(Have you ever seen a baby so alert? Sure you have but not this one!)

All the decent photos of Mama and baby are beautiful but probably not PG rated and therefore not my job to toss 'em out in my own appreciation of their gorgeousness. I'll have to get some where everyone has some clothes on later today. 

A long awaited, glorious experience, one of those where trying to frame words around it almost diminishes the glow surrounding thoughts of each moment. Well, except the funny ones. And right now I can't remember anything funny. But my daughter Sarah, who spent the night with me, says I was laughing in my sleep this morning, so something funny is going on.

Now the rest of my world begins again. What's the plan? Obviously, why bother with plans? The longer I live, the less I seem to be able to make any.

Have a fervently focused Friday. Do something flamboyantly freewheeling.