Child of God

I mentioned in my "thankfulness" posts that I was blessed to have my in-laws very generously keep our children during the entirety of my hospital stay so that Nathaniel could be with Rachel and me. Following our return home (literally within an hour of our getting home) my mom arrived, and she stayed with us for four days to help me with housework and getting school kids out the door and the like. It always feels good to have your mom around, even when you're 35, you know? Such a comfort! I hope my children feel that way when they're grown and having children of their own.

Once my mom left us, I had about two weeks to adjust to being home with baby, but those weeks included Thanksgiving, so were hardly "normal life". Combine the holiday with the start of meal deliveries from my girlfriends, and life was not too complicated. I hardly had to cook a meal on my own during that time.

And then people started arriving for the baptism!

Rachel was baptized on December 1st by our pastor. Her godparents are Nathaniel's sister, Liz, and her husband, Whit. They live in Boston, so when we initially invited them to be godparents for our baby months ago, we anticipated we'd be signing them up by proxy at the baptism. They insisted, however, that they really, really wanted to come. They missed the baptism of their first godchild because it was too near their wedding for them to make the trip to Minnesota, and I think they didn't want to miss out a second time. That, and they wanted to come home for the holidays.

Originally that became the plan - that we'd have the baptism right around Christmas, whenever Liz and Whit could be here. Not surprisingly, though, it turns out flights are way cheaper if you don't travel over Christmas, so plans changed. They came home at an off-season time for cheaper airfare, and got to welcome Rachel into the Church sooner, which we were happy to do!

It was a beautiful gathering. My parents came back up, bringing Elizabeth and Jake with them. Sam and Mary drove home from Missouri for something like the 8th weekend in a row. They are such good sports! And of course Phil and Renee were there, as well as Nathaniel's folks and the godparents. So a small gathering by our families' standards, but a decent sized party nonetheless.

Rachel chilled with her pacifier through the whole ceremony, only crying briefly when she was anointed with chrism. Msgr is sweet, and always warms the water for the baptism before he starts, so she didn't even flinch during her dousing.

(Sam was the photographer for all the pictures I've included above, and I'm grateful to him for documenting things so beautifully. Just another way we're blessed in this family!)

We had a lunch party afterward at our house. I ordered all the food from a barbecue place because I wasn't up for cooking and prepping it all myself this time. And I haven't been in a cake mood lately (some of you who know me well may wonder whether hell froze over as I typed that, because "cakey" is my thing!), so in lieu of a cake I ordered the most amazing sugar cookies from the sister of a friend. She recently started a business from home, Cara Bella Cookies. They were incredible! I definitely recommend them to anyone local!

This is the only photo in the post by me, as you likely could tell by the sad quality.

A huge "thank you" to everyone who made the trip for the baptism, and/or assisted with the preparations and party. And, of course, a special thanks to Liz and Whit for taking on the task of praying for Rachel and helping keep her on a straight path. I fully expect to hear from them if they ever think we're failing in raising her in her faith, although hopefully it won't come to that.

May God shower you with graces, sweet Rachel! St. Catherine of Sienna, pray for her!