Matt and Rachel's Baby Blog: It's Been a Month Already! Time to Banish Original Sin.

John was baptized last weekend. We had a wonderful celebration with family and friends. I was quite pleased that we made it to mass on time, and I managed to have everything we needed for our lunch afterwards. Well, except dessert plates, but the Christmas ones worked just fine. Thank goodness we had Aunt Kelly around to help out! She was key in the handful of last minute grocery store trips. I was also super thankful that the Lee's brought the beverages. They added a nice element to the day.

We really missed Msgr. Heier during the baptism ceremony. He was our pastor who baptized the other two boys who couldn't do the baptism because he is deployed as a military Chaplin. He is also moving to a new parish upon his return. The substitute priest did his best, but it was basically mass chaos during the baptism. No one could hear him. They also rushed the start of the ceremony, so the 7-month-old next to us didn't have time to eat. We were all painfully aware of this during the baptism. I felt so badly for his mother. I've been in her shoes. There were also about twice as many children watching the baptisms as there were adults. The kids were not misbehaved, there was just a lot of movement in the audience :)

Despite all this, John was an angel for the baptism and I just kept reflecting on Monsignor's trademark baptism messages to keep in mind the meaning of the day. First, that these babies are prefect in the moments after their baptism and they represent what perfect is. Second, he always discusses the smell of the chrism oil that is used in the sacrament, and each time I smelled that balsam scent on John's forehead, I was reminded of what we celebrated that day.

I'm hoping to have pictures of John's smile in my next post. We have started getting real smiles, but nothing long enough to get a picture of yet.