Baptism

The gown

Yesterday, the sun came out for the first time in a long time in Sydney. After days of heavy rain and dark skies, the clouds lifted, the sky was a glorious blue and the sun was warm.

A perfect day to take our baby boy to be baptised. This may seem odd to some of you who have been reading here for a while and know I'm not a religious person. It is something that Skip has felt strongly about, he wanted his children baptised in the church. I was happy to support him.

For me, it's been a wonderful way to welcome our kids into the world. A formal way of saying: "Hey there! Welcome." There has been a strong element of family tradition too in their baptisms, which was important for me and a way of including our children into a family with a lot of history. We have a gown that is over 100 years old and has been worn by four generations of my family, the girls and D are now part of that history. The church is where Skip and his brothers went to school, his brother was baptised and my great grandparents were married. It's nice to mesh our histories by baptising our children there.

As with the girls baptisms, we kept it very small, just immediate family and godparents. The people who are the most important to him, for now at least. The priest included the girls and the grandmothers, as well as the godparents and us, which made it special. As much as Skip and I are his parents, he's heavily influenced (and loved) by these people so for me it feels right to have a ceremony acknowledging it.

It was a lovely service, though D was pretty cranky the whole time except for when he splashed in the baptismal font and then rolled around on the aisle.

Afterwards we celebrated with champagne and sausage sizzle in the sun. A perfect Sunday afternoon.

Splashing in the holy water with his sisters.