Baptism of David James

David James was baptized at our parish on Sunday, September 10th.

Because of Hurricane Irma's wending path and changing ways, the godparents and grandparents were not able to come, so proxies stood in as godparents.

I think these photos perfectly reflect how different babies' baptisms are over the years. Photos from the first one or two babies were so beautiful, neat, symmetrical, and staged. We remembered to bring "the good camera," to put a grandfather's beautiful old rosary draped across the infant, to make everything prissy perfect.

Now we're lucky if we can get everyone to the church wearing shoes on their feet.

The photos are chaotic and jumbled and they show a mass of about 60 people who love us who showed up for this event.

I consider a baptism a rare opportunity for a really nice family portrait to be taken. I had been looking forward to this and coordinated our outfits to all be in black, white, and grey.

We gathered everyone and then realized we didn't have two-year-old Thomas--who had become too loud and was sent outside with an adult minder--so we sent for him to be brought inside. Then we realized that we didn't have the two girls, who had escaped outdoors to play in the grass, and we sent for them.

By now David and Thomas were wailing, and they continued to do so for the rest of the photo shoot.

We took numerous photos before we realized that we were missing Joseph, so we had to send a runner to go find him. He returned holding a rolled up "sword bulletin," which would later come into play. Meanwhile, Margaret was acting ridiculous in the photos.

This is probably the best family portrait we got out of 14.

It was then that Mama, who is plastering on a very forced smile through all these antics and a wailing newborn, noticed the bulletin sword, which has RUINED her planned formal family portrait, the likes of which she gets only once or twice per year. Without thinking of the repercussions, Mama ripped the bulletin out of her four-year-old's hands and THREW IT across the church into the pews.

Joseph turns away, heart trampled.

Joseph begins weeping hot tears. Note how his siblings have begun laughing at him.

In terrible irony, Joseph buries his crying face into the woman's skirts who tore his heart out when she tore the bulletin from his hands. Siblings are still cruelly laughing.

Joseph tries to hide further . . . and the laughter just increases.

Finally Mama and Mary try to comfort the poor child. The infant has been wailing inconsolably this entire time.

I'm getting better at planning these receptions to be extremely simple. We bought a few trays of appetizer food at Costco, the kind for which one peels off the plastic covering and puts the food out as-is: nuts, cheese and crackers, veggies and dip. We ordered the cake from Costco, and the table decorations from Amazon, shipped to our door. At the last moment, I asked lovely 12- and 14-year-old girls at our parish to set it all up for me. Voila, and done!