Jane's Blessing

So I never posted pictures or mentioned Jane's blessing. And it's worth mentioning because a) it's an important event, b) I worked my toosh off on that dress, and c) the whole story is mildly humorous.



a) What a cool thing, almost elitist in a Chosen kind of way, it is to give a baby a blessing. In some weird way, it was almost like her spiritual birth. I mean, there was all this preparation and build up to her birth, largely on my end of things. And then there was the frantic, sleep-deprived, craziness of her first months of life. And right about the time they start smiling (or that mommies start smiling again) and seem to become little people, we get the opportunity of giving them a name and a blessing from their Heavenly Father. This time the ball was in Eric's court, the Adam and the Namer of the family. My body was the conduit for her physical creation, Eric's body, through his priesthood, the conduit of her spiritual...yay, I'm totally just pontificating (or BSing) here, so don't take me for doctrine by any means. But it was a really special experience and I'm trying to describe it.


b) My toosh is still recovering from many a motherly endeavor, but this particular one turned out quite beautifully. My mother made most of the dress and I got to prettify it. We actually bought the fabric at the JoAnne's superstore in Austin before we had her, you know, during that week of my due date when my mom flew out and we shopped, crafted, and walked ourselves silly willing the baby to come out. The bodice and sleeves iare from the extra fabric my wedding dress was made from and the skirt is shiny satin. My wedding dress had gorgeous tulle shimmering out the bottom, so at the last minute I decided to overlay the skirt with tulle. I gathered the tulle by hand then attached to a satin ribbon and sewed the whole thing on, again by hand (I was too nervous to use my machine). And then I stitched on the other pretties and made the headband while sitting in stake conference...which brings me to:

my dad, the Man of the Hour, with the Baby of the Hour

c) So, since I now live a couple miles from my sister, we decided to do a two-fer with Jane's blessing and my niece Juliana's baptism. My younger sister got special leave to fly out and both my parents and my youngest sister were coming. Plus my sister's in-laws, who I love, would also be there. I was stoked. I thought I'd be lucky to have my dad come out when we lived in Austin. Anyway, as it turned out, there was a misunderstanding at my Dad's work and he ended up not being able to come. I was, well, not entirely devastated, but pretty bummed. I wanted to cancel the blessing but felt bad for my mom and sisters who had come all that way. They told me I was silly on all counts and so we decided to reschedule for when my dad could come. We really had the pick of any day, so we picked a day so that dad could be around for Halloween (he makes a great Frankenstein) and then the week before we realized it was Stake Conference that Sunday...which means we DIDN'T bless her in front of the whole congregation, but at my sister's house. So instead of showing off my baby and her dress to several hundred people, we just showed it off to a handful.

And yet truth and beauty are not dependent on the audience (take that rhetoric), and both the blessing and the dress were full of both. My baby on the other hand, was just plain tired.

doesn't she look exhausted?