His Baptism (finally)

This past Sunday, Charlie was finally baptized.  It was a long time coming.  Charlie was born right after James ended his last semester, and many of James' classmates left to go various places for the summer, including Charlie's godmother.  We had the option of either waiting until late August to get him baptized, or asking Carly (the godmother) to pay hundreds of dollars to fly back to DC from Indiana for a weekend.  Since all involved are broke graduate students, we chose the first one.  Then, sadly, Hurricane Irene came the exact weekend of the scheduled baptism.  We knew we would lose power, and didn't know how or if Carly and Mike (the godfather) could make it from downtown to our church in hurricane aftermath.  So, we canceled.  But, the day finally came and it was beautiful.  Here are some pictures.

 Although none of our family was able to come celebrate with us, we had many wonderful friends come to witness the baptism.  Here is the first half.

Here is the second half.  Seeing so many smiling faces in the pews made me remember how blessed we've been with great friends out here.  

Charlie just cracked me up.  He cried during the entire Liturgy of the Word portion of the baptism.  Then as soon as we got up and gathered around the font, he got quiet, paid complete attention and an almost contemplative look came upon his face.  He didn't cry a bit when he was baptized, but was startled when Fr. DeRosa anointed his ears.  Then he gave us some great big smiles during the prayers of blessing on the parents.  It was very sweet.

 Poor Lucy.  She'd been looking forward to Charlie's baptism for quite some time and talking about it nonstop.  (For a long time it was, "Sunday!  Charlie be baptized!" On Saturday, I baked a cake.  Then it became, "Sunday!  Eat cake!  Charlie be baptized!")  But, the baptism was held after the 11am mass.  And one mass is just about all Lucy can handle.  By the time mass is over, she is running all over the place with chaos just spilling out of her.  We knew she wouldn't be able to keep still or quiet for the baptism, so we asked a great friend to keep an eye on her.  I think she missed the actual baptism part, and when people started leaving the church, Lucy broke down crying about the baptism being "put away."  

 

 We picked some great godparents.  They're really pretty awesome.  They want to have monthly godparent soirees or GPSs.  Since we are all in DC for grad school, it is likely that this will be the only year they live near Charlie so they're taking advantage of it!

 After the baptism, we invited everyone (all 25ish of them) back to our very small basement for a party.  I made 15lbs of pulled pork, and everyone brought a dish to share.  It was great.  One of our friends brought watermelon punch and he hallowed out the watermelon and used it as the punch bowl.  See?  We know some pretty great people.  Lucy, our little party animal, cried every time some one left.  "PEOPLES?"  I know I'm making it sound like she was crying the whole day, but she was actually great.  When just a few people remained, she sat next to me on the couch, looked at a book, and then just completely passed out.  

 The day itself was so busy that I didn't get any close up pictures of Charlie in his baptism gown.  This gown was made by my grandmother for my brother to wear.  Then I wore it, (skip twenty-something years) then Lucy wore it.  And now, Charlie.  I love that.  I hope a lot more babies wear it.  On a funnier note, Charlie has gotten so chunky that we could only snap one of the back snaps of the gown.  Ah well.  Anyway, I wanted some pictures, so I put it on him today.  He still smells like chrism, so it totally counts.

 I kept trying to get him to smile, but of course as soon as he did, my hand slipped on the camera.

 And then the gown found its way into Charlie's mouth, and with that, we decided the photo shoot was over.

Oh, and if you want to read more about Charlie's patron saint, Blessed Charles de Foucauld, click here.  He wrote a beautiful prayer that I used to pray often in college (which I just realized is not list on that link, so I'll type it here).

Prayer of Abandonment 

Father,
I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will.
Whatever you may do, I thank you:
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures.
I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul;
I offer it to you
with all the love of my heart,
for I love you, Lord,
and so need to give myself,
to surrender myself into your hands,
without reserve,
and with boundless confidence,
for you are my Father.

Charles de Foucald

mid-September days

Just a few photos and stories from our days.  

The other day, I set Charlie down to sleep on his favorite place with a burp cloth behind his head.  Then I read a book to Lucy.  Then I looked back at Charlie.  Poor little sweetie.

I think Lucy's laughter woke him up.  "Hat on Charlie!"

 The other day, it was raining and we couldn't go to the park.  Lucy was pathetically playing with this piece of cardboard and whining because it wouldn't do what she wanted it to do.  So, I made an indoor slide for her with the cardboard.  She was overjoyed and played with it all day.

Charlie is all of a sudden trying very very hard to roll over. 

Extreme effort.

Still trying.

Phew.  That was hard work.

Lucy wanted me to take a picture of her putting her kitty to sleep... in her dress.

We have been playing with side-walk chalk (or "special colors") almost every day.  For a long time, all Lucy wanted me to do was write ABCs and 1-20.  I finally got her to do some coloring herself (only after I did my alphabetic and numeric duty).

A couple weeks ago, Lucy saw some boys climbing trees.  Thanks a lot, boys.  Now any tree she sees, she wants to climb.  She can get a bit higher than I'm comfortable with.

I love her face in this one.  I believe she was in the midst of telling me about trees and how you can't climb them if you go higher than mommy says.

We survived.

Yes, the earthquake, the hurricane, the two children teething at once.  We're still here.  Still alive.  No one injured.  Only a little bit of sanity lost.  Here are the brief stories: In the middle of the day, the glasses in our cabinet started shaking and I thought the people who live upstairs must be having a wild dance party.  Then it got louder and Lucy ran and literally jumped into my arms.  I did not really feel the ground shaking, and all I could think of is that the water heater must be about to explode (it's behind a door near the cabinet where all the glasses were shaking).  Then it suddenly stopped.  My cell phone made the noise that means I have a voicemail, but whenever I tried to check it, it said, "network busy."  It did that for like a half hour.  I was ridiculously confused.  I finally searched "Washington DC news" online (I really just could not put two and two together) and then it all made sense-- seismic activity.  Duh.  But, keep it mind I did not at all feel the ground shaking so that counts for something.

The hurricane was the opposite.  We were quite prepared.  James works at the Emergency Preparedness Dept at the hospital so we had all the latest weather reports about what the hurricane might do in our area.  We bought bottled water, filled up the gas tank, ate all the best refrigerated food in case it went bad in a power outage, and even sand-bagged our door (our basement has flooded a couple of times even in an average thunderstorm).  We also cancelled Charlie's baptism, which was a huge bummer.  We're hoping to reschedule later this month.  And for all of that, all that happened was that our power went out, but for less than 24 hours so none of our food even went bad-- hooray!  Our garden maintained some damage though.  All of the sunflowers were either snapped in half or uprooted.  Thus, we survived our first earthquake and hurricane, all in one week.

In other news, our old friend Jack (who I used to babysit last year) came to play with us today.  He starts preschool tomorrow, but needed someone to hang out with him today and we were glad to oblige.

Charlie snoozed the rainy day away.  This is his favorite place to sleep (on the couch, propped up with one red pillow).  Don't worry, he's only there when I'm right next to him.  I have to play defense with Lucy otherwise she'd smother him with love.

This is an accurate picture of Lucy lately-- fingers in mouth constantly.  Those molars must be killer.  She actually took some bites out of Jack's soccer ball (made out of styrafoam).  

 A quick Lucy funny: I got a new music program on my computer lately that allows me to play pretty much any track I want for free.  It's great.  So, we've been listening to a lot of Raffi lately.  He cracks me up and drives me nuts all at the same time.  But, I am eternally grateful to him for writing a song about brushing your teeth.  Up until now, Lucy would scream, cry, kick, run, etc if you even got close to her mouth with a toothbrush.  I tried everything.  Upon listening to Raffi's teeth-brushing song 200 times in one day, she suddenly decided brushing your teeth is awesome and will even do it herself.  So, Raffi may have saved up thousands of dollars of dentistry bills.

Speaking of Raffi, we also like the song "Oats and Beans and Barley Grow."  Lucy has changed it to "Oats and Beans and Charlie Grow," which makes me smile every time.  Too funny.  Here is our growing guy:

God help us, I think he might be an extrovert.  Sometimes I'll be holding him in my lap, reading to Lucy, talking on the phone, or whatever, and I'll get the feeling that someone is looking at me.  I look down at him, and there he is just intently staring at me.  When I look at him though, he bursts into a smile and laughs exuberantly.  He has suddenly become very interactive, smiling and carrying on a conversation like he was born to do it.

Recently, my mom sent us the baptismal gown for Charlie (my grandmother made it for my brother to be baptized in.  Then I was baptized in it, then Lucy, and now Charlie), and she sent along this little playmat that we had left in her basement.  Lucy had a fantastic time telling Charlie all about it, and I'm fairly sure she remembered playing in it herself.  The conversation went something like this, "See, Charlie?  You like that, Charlie?  See, one butterfly for Lucy, one butterfly for Charlie.  Look at all these pretty butterflies, Charlie."

As you can see, Charlie was more interested in his chatty big sister than he was the butterflies.  Later, when Lucy was occupied with something else, he tried talking with the butterflies, but they were not nearly as interesting.

James started school last week, and things are chugging along again.  I've started to look for part-time childcare work.  Goodbye, summer!