Baptisms

Until a few days ago, I had never attended a baptism, Catholic or otherwise.

On Saturday, all three of my sweet girls were baptized.

I was pretty nervous beforehand.

Of course, I knew it wasn’t about me at all, but I still worried I might say or do the wrong thing. I tend to feel nervous when I’m in church that I’m going to do something stupid that completely breaks the rules and has everyone staring at me, slack-jawed with shock at my unintentional inappropriate behavior.

But it was just perfect.

It was beautiful.

When we went to our class about baptism on Thursday night, they told us that toddlers and older children could either stand or sit in the font, or kneel next to it and lean their head over the edge. The deacon said that at Sis’s age we could choose to have her in the font like her sisters or we could try to hold her and do hers like an infant baptism. I was uncertain which way to go.

I was afraid if I tried to let her stand in the font that she would sit down and her diaper would disintegrate and all that weird gel stuff inside a disposable diaper would come out into the Holy Water (this concern was complete with full-colored mental imagery of the above-mentioned open-mouthed horror from the church peeps). Yes, I know I probably would have had time after Mass to change her into a swim diaper, but I was going for simple and not rushed.

So, I planned to hold her and have her baptized like a smaller baby. We even did a practice at home in the sink to see if she would let me hold her that way and have water poured over her head. She didn’t mind it at all at home.

She was a little less enthusiastic about it at the church with the deacon standing over her.

But she did just fine.

I had taken the girls to the church on Friday morning to explain to them what would happen on Saturday. I talked with them about Holy Water and what it is (as best I understand it). I gave them little bottles to fill with Holy Water from the font, which we brought home and decorated afterward (I got the idea here). I let them choose how they wanted to do their baptism. They both got really excited when they heard they could stand in the water and decided they wanted to do it that way.

After that both of the older girls were so excited for their baptisms. My parents came to town Friday night and Miss ran right to her room to show them her little bottle of Holy Water saying, “Look Grandma! You’re going to love this!”

(Yes, that is a toilet-paper-roll Jesus. Gotta love DLTK)

They couldn’t wait to get their chance to stand in the font.

They were precious.

The whole experience with all three of them was just so special.

I think Lass’s favorite was the part with the candle. Since bringing it home, she has repeatedly asked to get hers out of the box and light it, or failing that to just carry it around.

Special Godparents:

I will never forget the looks on the faces of my girls as the water was poured on their heads. Their shy smiles and looks of wonder throughout the ceremony were priceless.

It was an amazing day.