Our First Cradle Catholic

You will all be happy to know that Laurel is safely "in the fold." Her baptism was yesterday. A low-key affair. Actually, another baby was baptized right before Laurel, and I thought it strange that the parish secretary hadn't mentioned to me that there was another baby to be baptized the same day. And also strange that they did the entire service for that baby before Laurel, rather than do them simultaneously.

Well, it turned out that Fr. Finn didn't know about Laurel. So after he was done with the first baby, he started to put everything away and my husband went up and asked what about Laurel. Fr. Finn just rolled with it and went ahead and baptized her.

Only her godparents were there (our sponsors from last Easter -- the only Catholic friends we really have at this point, still. At least IRL). My in-laws conveniently ran late and showed up at the house afterwards. My brother-in-law also came to the house, as did my best friend. My husband's sister called later to say she forgot all about it, and his grandparents didn't acknowledge the event or invitation in any way -- which I assume is because of hard feelings Grandpa has against Catholicism.

As for my side, they're all out of state, so we didn't bother inviting them. The family I used to work for was down with the flu, so they stayed away out of fear of infecting all of us. My best friend popped came to the house for cake and snacks, but skipped the baptism itself.

I was glad to have a nice little party for Laurel afterwards, but my post-partum hormones must be getting the better of me, because I am just so sad that her baptism was so poorly acknowledged. It started with Fr. Finn not knowing she was to be baptized (I have to call the parish secretary to find out what THAT is all about, because I know we agreed on the 15th). And then seeing this large group of family and friends gathered for the other baby, complete with misty-eyed grandparents and tons of photos snapped...followed by less than half the people coming to Laurel's party than I had expected. It's just got me down. It shouldn't, but it does.

Laurel didn't mind. She was a perfect angel through the whole thing and slept in various people's arms all afternoon.

Better news -- my brother-in-law has finally landed an engineering job. He'll be designing all types of fire trucks. Pretty cool, huh?

--Sparki