This weekend we're having a thanksgiving ceremony for our youngest daughter, Estelle.

She's almost 2 and we should have done it ages ago, but you know how it is - first you're just surviving the onslaught of a new baby, coming to terms with having 3 children instead of 2, next thing you know they're crawling, then walking, then talking, then borrowing the car keys and going out on dates. Before you know it the music is just too damn loud and all you crave is your slippers and some peace and quiet to read the paper.

So, in summary, she's nearly 2 and we're only just getting ourselves in gear to have a thanksgiving celebration for her. How fortunate she is to have such together parents.

So, why are we giving thanks for Estelle?

Well, first, as you can see from the photo above, she is delicious. How could you we be not be thankful for being related to her?

Secondly, we believe that God has entrusted her to us, so we are thankful to God for that trust.

And thirdly, we want to acknowledge her presence in our family publicly.

We're choosing to have a ceremony in which we will 'present' her to our faith community, our family and friends. This will be acted prophetically, as it were, by passing her to my good friend Simon as representative of our church community.

In presenting her to our community, family and friends we are publicly acknowledging that she does not belong to us. She is not our possession. She belongs to God, she is a precious and unique member of God's creation, and our friend on the journey of faith. We are publicly stating that we are are not enough for her, we are not the limit of her experience, learning and responsibility.

In 'giving' her to our church community, to our family and our friends we are entrusting her into their care and keeping. We need them. She needs them. And they need her.

But, after blessing her, Simon will pass her back to us, her parents, to be raised gently, in the love of God.

To us, the act is more than symbolic.

Ultimately she does not belong to us. She is a gift entrusted to us by God.

This is the same pattern we have followed with each of our children (Estelle is our third, with big sisters Phoebe and Imogen). In preparing for their thanksgivings we were inspired by the life of the Bruderhof communities, as recounted in Johann Christoph Arnold, A Little Child Shall Lead Them: Hopeful Parenting in a Confused World (Farmington, Pennsylvania: Plough Publishing, 1997).