Emma is Four Months, and The Baptisms!

Last Monday, April 28th, Emma turned four months old! This day was also the 8th anniversary of our first date!

Emma is growing so fast! On the 29th she had her 4 month wellness doctor visit. She weighed in at 16 pounds, 6 ounces, measured 25 inches long and has a head circumference of 41 cm. This puts her in the 75th percentile in height, 90th percentile in weight and 50th percentile in head circumference. She’s doing great and is very healthy. She also received her oral roto virus vaccine, and then 3 shots for various other viruses. It went much better than her 2 month vaccines. We gave her some Tylenol before the shots, so that it was already in her system. She still screamed and cried but we were able to calm her much faster and she went to sleep in the car right away.

She has discovered her toes, loves to look in the mirror and she is getting close to rolling over!

We also had Emma's Baptism on April 30, with Uncle Todd and Aunt Jessica as Godparents. Technically, we had two baptisms. All day we tried to get Emma to go #2 (our new least favorite number), and all day, no matter how much we pleaded, Emma held that she would not go #2. I suppose you can't blame her. If you were told everybody you ever loved was coming over to your house, and you were expected to poop in your pants while they were all waiting expectantly on you...you'd probably refuse too.

Needless to say we eventually packed everybody up and made for the church, where we sat in the first few pews, as we were first on the agenda for the day and needed to be able to leap up...baby at the ready...to get baptized.

Everything went off without a hitch. Emma was a sweetheart, and the pastor walked her all around the church, introducing her to everybody in the congregation before handing her off to Daddy and starting in on the sermon. The sermon for the day was 2nd Corinthians, Chapter 2, verses 14 and 15:

"But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing;"

So the pastor starts in on talking about good smelling people to Christ, and bad smelling people to Christ. And 'lo, this is right when we hear Emma, who is still sitting in Daddy's lap, rip tear something that sounds like her Irish heritage coming through her cornhole. Mommy looks down to check the situation, and with a look of startled horror disclaims, "It's all over you!"

Apparently no diaper of this mortal coil could withstand the pent up fury that was a newly blessed Emma butt, and in the following disintegration the flow ran several inches deep off from daddy's lap, down to the pew, down off from the pew on to the floor. In mommy's ensuing panic she wrapped up baby with a blanket, snatches the diaper bag and in all due haste flees the scene of the crime.

Leaving Daddy sitting on Pew 1. Seat 1. With nothing but a smile to clean himself off with since Mommy took the diaper bag, the sole source of cleaning materials for apparently miles.

Panic ensued for Daddy.

Daddy is wondering if the hymnals have been sanctified, and debating whether he'd be earning himself an express slot at the front of the line to Hell if he wiped what amounted to ...let's call it friggin' buckets...of poop off of himself with pages from a hymnal. Uncle Todd, having never seen baby poop before, immediately begins questioning Daddy as to what's wrong with Emma, as her poop is orange. Only dimly aware of the horror scene taking place in the pew in front of them, Grandma and Grandpa Smith attempt to help by handing Daddy a single tissue. This only began the giggling. The pastor, unaware of the disaster, is still going on about odors and even going so far as to refer to stinky smelling babies, and Uncle Todd is saying, "Amen," every chance he gets. The choir members, sitting at a different angle, are able to see the horror and have begun giggling themselves.

For Daddy, this went on for time immemorial.

At the end of the sermon, Mommy finally came back in to see a bewildered Daddy doused in poo. The rest of the service was spent trying to silently, surreptitiously, remove all traces of evidence from both the crime scene and from the recently baptized victims.

There is a DVD of the event, filmed by the church only on that day and service for a unique circumstance. A copy was obtained and sits on a darkened shelf unwitnessed to this day.

All in all, the day was a wonderful event, as Emma is a wonderful baby girl who blesses everybody around her. Sometimes all too clearly.