Daniel's Baptism

This past weekend, we celebrated Daniel’s baptism. We were blessed to have all of Danny’s Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles present. We had a lovely brunch on Sunday morning and then proceeded to the church for noon mass, to be followed by the baptism.

About 10 minutes before mass started, it became a three ring circus! Cameron took a nose dive out of our SUV and landed on his forehead in gravel. Thankfully, Dennis’ mom is a nurse so she examined Cameron’s cut and said that we would need to take him to the emergency room but that it could wait until after the baptism. Since all of our family had traveled from out of town to the baptism, postponing the ceremony didn’t seem to be an option. So, Dennis and I missed all but the last 10 minutes of mass while taking care of the boys. We then proceeded to the baptism and, just when it seemed as if we had the situation under control, all hell broke loose again. Cameron’s wound started to drip below his two bright green Scooby-Do Band-Aids and he, understandably so, came unglued again. At about the same time, the priest poured water on Danny’s head and we then had two boys screaming and crying. Cameron, who had been looking forward to Danny’s baptism for weeks and telling everyone who would listen (including his preschool teacher) that the priest was going to put oil and water on Danny’s head and that Danny wasn’t going to like it, stopped crying long enough to tell his brother “be brave buddy, be brave.” A few moments later, I bent down to put Cameron on the ground and came up with blood on my nose, which Dennis kindly pointed out to me. At some point during the ceremony, the priest, who was very patient and understanding, asked where the video camera was and said that he should send a video of this to seminaries so that future priests could see what they were getting themselves into! Once Danny was baptized and a few quick pictures were taken, Cameron got the go to the emergency room, where he was glued together while eating a Popsicle and watching cartoons. I’m fairly certain that Danny’s baptism will stand out in the mind of all who attended it!

As you can see in the picture, Danny has a lovely cross from his Godmother, Aunt Jenni, and a St. Christopher medal from his Godfather, Uncle Vince. The St. Christopher medal is engraved on the back with “F.U.G.F.” which stands for “Fromma U Godfather” in Italian-American. My brother’s godfather gave him an identical medal when he was baptized and, when I opened Danny’s gift, I asked Vince if he still had his medal. Apparently, he did until about a week ago when his dog ate it! Vince had decided to give Danny his medal and set it out to bring to the baptism. He and his wife have two VERY large but well behaved dogs, Mitch and Murphy. Well, apparently Murphy decided to eat the velvet bag containing the medal while Vince and Lizzie weren’t looking (Mitch tends to stick to dog food after eating a sock a few years ago and having surgery)! Vince and Lizzie spent three hours in their yard the weekend before the baptism wearing rubber gloves and digging through dog poop to find the medal! While I greatly appreciate the sentiment and their efforts, in some respects, I think I’m okay with the fact that they only found ¾ of the velvet bag but not the medal!