peter young’s listopia

   
So many thanks for all your kind words and congratulations over the last week. It really does mean plenty to us.

It's hard to believe Miles is a week old already. We've learned to get ahead by anticipation: if you get him up after he wakes but before he starts crying he doesn't mind what you do, whether it's a bath or a quick nappy change, but if he beats you to the punch he will make everything twice as hard if he ain't content and happy inside himself.

About the names we chose. 'Miles' was quickly understood by my father-in-law yesterday when he was browsing over our DVD shelves and found the brilliant Mike Dibb/Channel 4 documentary The Miles Davis Story. Despite being a teacher all his life he barely reads any English, but he picked out the word 'Miles' quite easily. (I don't know how much he understood of Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, which he also tried to read, but I dare not ask). I got the idea for the name while listening to Cassandra Wilson's tribute CD Traveling Miles about three months ago, when we already knew it was to be a boy. Not named after Miles Vorkosigan, no matter what del_c thinks.

As usual we've also given him a Thai name, Tanat, which means something like 'the world is ready for me'. Choosing a Thai name is a very complicated business as most Thais are irrecoverably superstitious. You must take into consideration the day of the week the child is born and the date, and on particular days you shouldn't give a child a name beginning with certain letters. Each letter of the potential name also has a numeric value, and adding these up the total number will then forecast the child's characteristics. Then you do the same for the English spelling. If after all that everything still looks good, then go ahead. There is simply no getting around this. Anyway, I like the the name too, and I like the sound of the word.

And his birth certificate, which we picked up today, actually states "Waxing Moon: 13th" and "Year of the Ox". How cool is that?