Maya's Dedication

Our family, perhaps like most families these days, is somewhat religiously eclectic. I was raised in both the Disciples (my mom's) and Catholic (my dad's) traditions. I was baptized in my mom's church, University Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) shortly before my 15th birthday (I think. It's possible I was almost 14?). And now I'm a Disciples pastor.

I think it's fair to characterize the religious aspect of Tim's upbringing by saying that Tim's parents transitioned from practicing Catholics to cultural Catholics over the course of the first years of his childhood. Both he and his sister were baptized and have godparents, but weren't "raised in the church" after that point -- attending kindergarten in a Catholic school was basically the extent of his religious education. (As babies, my three siblings and I were neither baptized nor dedicated, since my parents wanted us to choose for ourselves. They made sure we got as much religious education as possible in BOTH traditions... so we could have the information to make that choice.)

So, when we had our first kid, it was pretty clear we would not have her baptized as an infant. This was interesting because I was serving a United Church of Christ church at that time, and it is their tradition to baptize babies. So, we had what we think was their first infant dedication, a brief ceremony during a Sunday worship service where the parents dedicate the baby to God, and the parents and congregation dedicate themselves to nurturing the child in faith -- I put together the liturgy. This is a pretty common ceremony in churches that practice "believer's baptism" (that is, baptizing people who are old enough to decide for themselves). Fortunately, that congregation is very open to a variety of experiences and perspectives (even in worship!), and it didn't seem to be anything other than a joyful moment for everyone.

Anyway, it turned out that even though it didn't matter to Tim whether water got sprinkled on the little baby or not, the *godparents* part was important to him, because those relationships have been special to him throughout his life. So, we had an infant dedication with godparents -- we chose the alliterative pairing of Jessica and Jesse (Tim's only and my oldest sibling).

Okay, yes, I realize the title says *Maya's* dedication... but you know me, I had to go into the theological background at least a little bit... and it turns out this is one of those "second child" stories, too. Because Quinn's dedication was an Event. We planned it so that Tim's parents and sister (who was the godmother, after all!) could make the cross-country trip to be there, we borrowed a fancy christening gown (which made the cross-country trip with the grandparents), and nearly ALL my in-town relatives came. Which was a lot.
See?

Well, sometime during the first, California, half of our whirlwind, bi-coastal baby tour introducing Maya to her family and friends, I realized something. While still in California, we had developed the following vague travel-planning guidelines: 1) After we get home after this, please let's stay in Nicaragua for a good long while 2) Let's come back to California next time we visit the U.S. and 3) maybe Christmas in the Washington, DC area in 2012? That meant that AFTER the baby-tour visit, it would be more than a year until we were back in the DC area, in the congregation where we are members (University Christian, the location of not only my baptism, but also our wedding and my ordination). And, since it's called "infant" dedication, it might be a good idea to take advantage of visiting our home church while the kid is still an infant.

So, instead of the big family event that Quinn's dedication was, it was planned totally at the last minute. The Dress was handed off to us the day before we left Fresno, just in case (we still hadn't totally decided/ figured out if we could even make it happen). We called the church to see if we could still get it into the bulletin at the last minute. We asked the godparents at the last minute (and in one case, after the fact!). My sister said "what would you have done if I hadn't been able to make it to church?" Little did she know... we had no Plan B! We barely had a Plan A. My older brother's family already had other plans. And then, my dad had a (mild!) heart attack two days before, so it wasn't just the California grandparents who missed it -- all three of her grandparents got a copy of the church bulletin in the mail. Fortunately, my aunt and uncle and even some cousins who were in town for Thanksgiving did come and help fill in a couple "family rows" near the front.

But, I was really happy that it worked out. It felt good to present Maya to our church family in that formal way.
Gloria, the acting senior pastor, talked about children and the raising of them in faith, and asked us to make some commitments. She then took Maya and walked her down the aisle, presenting her to the congregation.
And then, when she came back up front to our assembled family and handed Maya back to me she took Quinn from Tim's arms, carried her out and presented her as well.
I loved the way that took what could have been a tough moment for Quinn (of little-sister-getting-the-spotlight) and included her in the blessing of the moment.

We decided to think outside the box a little when choosing godparents.
Tim's "honorary sister" Elisabeth is her godmother,
my younger brother Eric is the godfather, and my sister Amy (a pagan who goes to a UU church) is the goddessmother. :)
The one thing that we learned from Quinn's dedication and did *better* the second time was to get more photos of Maya in the dress.

4 for 4

How many birthday parties does a four year old girl need? Well, if you're Quinn, it turns out the answer is: four.

To Quinn, and perhaps to many other children, the essential element of a birthday party is - cake! Here is the cake from her birthday party at school at the end of October, right before we left Nicaragua.

Nicaraguan birthday parties are also pretty much required to have a piñata. Quinn is whacking away at it.

Maya came to the party, too!

The second fourth birthday party was at Quinn's grandparents' house in Fresno, less than a week before her actual birthday, and just a few days before the end of our time in California. It also featured:

a cake ( a *strawberry* cake -- Quinn was a little fixated on that this year)...

piñata...

and friends!

On Quinn's actual birthday, in the middle of the week, we were staying with my Aunt Leslie in Maryland, and she was kind enough to make the birthday girl a strawberry cake. The frosting was just pink as opposed to artificial strawberry flavor. I felt it was a decided improvement, and Quinn did not know the difference.

I did not get any photos of the cake, but here is Quinn with the brown-haired, blue-eyed American Girl doll that Aunt Leslie gave her.

And, for the fourth and final party, Quinn's Aunt Holly took the strawberry theme and ran with it:

These cupcakes were just pink with a few real strawberries on top, and again, Quinn did not seem to know the difference.

She loved celebrating with her cousins.

Happy Birthday to Quinn!

Having been so thoroughly feted, we had to warn her that she would not be getting nearly as many presents for Christmas!

Santa, Maybe

I am going to go ahead and blame Lee for tonight's post. This is also the year for us, when we have to start figuring out what to say to the kid about Santa Claus.

It's interesting, too, that here in Nicaragua there's probably more of an anti-Santa movement than in the U.S. Santa Claus doesn't actually make much sense in a Nicaraguan context, because the kids get their presents on Christmas Eve (sometimes from the Baby Jesus) -- so Santa's late to the party on many levels. The opposition comes from, on the one hand, fundamentalist Christian influences from North America, and on the other, anti-commercialism and opposition to uncritical adoption of North American culture. It seems in many ways quite similar to the anti-Halloween sentiments I've noticed, although not as intense.

But, we are from the United States, so Santa is part of our culture, albeit in varied ways. Quinn's love for the Baby Jesus is firmly in place, so I'm not too worried about Santa supplanting Jesus in the Christmas Story. Not this year, anyway.

So, I decided to tell Quinn the whole story. About a guy named Nicholas who loved the Baby Jesus and loved children, and made sure that poor children (not just children whose parents had enough money) could have a present to open on Christmas in memory of the gifts the Magi brought to Jesus. Who, years later, when people remembered his life, got upgraded to "Saint Nicholas." And who inspired people to make sure that poor children would have presents on Christmas, so they left them labeled "from Saint Nicholas." I glossed over the languages the name went through, and said that it was the children, who sometimes make up their own way to say things, who changed it to "Santa Claus."

She liked the story, and asks to hear it again pretty regularly. Her first question was whether or not we have enough money to buy her presents. She also made up her own story, where Santa Claus "picks the flowers and leaves." But I think she has picked up on a lot of Santa stuff from school, movies, etc., because she said very decidedly that she wanted to get a present from Santa. So, we made a deal. If she can read "Santa Claus" by Christmas, she can get one present that is from Santa Claus. (I think she may be reading "Claus" for everything that starts with C for a while...) We're also watching a lot of Christmas movies to get in the mood (and because she's on vacation from school), so further Santa inculcation is inevitable.

It's also interesting timing because her imagination has just recently taken off. She makes up stories (and words, too, which can be confusing) all the time now. So she is in just the right place to be compelled by the magic of a new imaginary scheme, and already has the capacity to play along. And with her, we get to "play" a little more as well. We are so lucky.

Christmas Traditions: Quinn's Take

Every culture and every family that celebrates Christmas has its own particular traditions. In starting our own family by getting married, and especially now that we're raising a kid together, Tim and I have thought and talked quite a bit about the differences in the way each of our families celebrate Christmas, and the things that we might want to do in a new way.

But those differences sort of pale in comparison to the differences between U.S. and Nicaraguan Christmas traditions. We learned from a friend while on our most recent trip that as a kid, he always thought that the Baby Jesus brought the Christmas presents that his parents hid under his bed. Christmas trees are not that common here (okay, well, there certainly aren't a lot of pine trees), and, it being so hot, there aren't fireplaces, or chimneys, or stockings hung on said fireplace (much less a fat man magically squeezing down said chimney).

All this to get to my main point, which is that I'm pretty enamored of the synthesis that we heard from the back seat today. Quinn said "I'm going to sing a song." And then proceeded to sing something along the lines of "The stars gave presents to Santa Claus, so he could give them to the kids. And then the baby came, and the angels came to see the baby."

Trees Fall in Brookland

So, we had a really intense, 20 minute thunderstorm yesterday afternoon. We were enjoying watching it from the porch until the lightweight porch rug was blown so that it totally covered Quinn! Then we enjoyed watching it through the windows. Power lines were swaying and small tree branches were flying on our street, and Quinn's toy plastic bucket got blown and/ or washed around the corner and stuck in the storm drain.

It was very dramatic. When we went for a walk to the Basilica (Tim took some lovely pictures) we saw that many trees had suffered serious damage:



And one quite large tree was knocked down entirely.



The traffic lights were also out at Michigan and Monroe:



For the drivers along Michigan Ave, things were pretty exciting, with a fallen branch blocking 2 of the 4 lanes right before the intersection with no stoplights. It was fortunate that not too many people seemed to be out driving on Sunday afternoon.

Happy Passport Day!

So, it turns out that today is National Passport Day. Not entirely sure what this means, but it made our lives a lot easier when it came to applying for Quinn's passport.

Children have to apply in person with their parents, and most passport acceptance facilities (most of which are post offices) have limited hours, Monday through Friday. I have concocted and abandoned more than one scheme for Quinn and me to meet Tim at a downtown post office at a convenient time so we can apply in person. The Passport Agency a block from Tim's work is usually appointment-only, reserved for people who are leaving the country in the next two weeks.

A few DC post offices do have Saturday hours, but it turned out that by the time we thought of it today, most of them were closed already. But, the D.C. Passport Agency downtown was open today for National Passport Day from 10-3, and we had over an hour left in that window. So, we hopped in the car and headed downtown, and had one of the most pleasant bureaucratic-processing experiences we've had.

We were greeted by a helpful person as soon as we walked in, we were called almost immediately after getting a number, they photocopied our IDs for us (the one thing we hadn't gotten to), Quinn got not one but TWO balloons, at least five people sporting Passport stickers wished us a cheerful goodbye on the way out, and we were in and out in about twenty minutes. It was awesome. Happy Passport Day, everybody!

Dorie and Dawn!

Quinn and I were driving home one day last week, singing songs in the car, mostly with a Christmas theme. "Jingle Bells" and "We Wish you a Merry Christmas" are two of Quinn's favorites, primarily because they are featured on the episode of Caillou where he goes caroling with his family. She usually refers to the latter as "Merry Merry Merry Christmas."

We were waiting at a stop light when Quinn insisted that we sing "Dorie and Dawn"! She repeated this request loudly, and when I failed to respond quickly enough, screeched at me. Apparently, this was an effective method of communication, because all of a sudden I realized she was asking for "We Three Kings of Orient Are." Which I then sang, making Quinn happy again.

A day or two later, she was playing with the three Kings from her nativity set, and she informed me that "this one is Orie" and "this one is Dawn." Since our friend Dawn is married to Wesley, it turned out that he was the third King.

5 Months Later...

I have to say, my frequency of posting is pretty pathetic at this point. Quinn is now 15 months old! She had her 15 month checkup at the doctor yesterday, and is 50th percentile for weight, and possibly 25th percentile for length, but she was really mad and squirmy when getting measured, so it's not clear that it was at all accurate (for example, the head size reading was *smaller* than at her 12 month checkup). Anyway, here's a picture of our girl on Valentine's Day, in her Valentine's dress, doing one of her favorite things -- carrying Mama's purse. She often says "Bye-bye" and pretends she is going to walk out the front door when she does this.

She's also getting really good at walking.

And she loves to play... this picture of her riding on the dump truck was just too cute. It seems like she's learning new words at the rate of one a day... but that's probably a slight exaggeration. She does say "Please" and "thank you" when prompted, and was trying out "sorry" yesterday (but I'm pretty sure she hasn't grasped the concept). It is amazing how fast she is learning and growing. Next thing you know, she'll be learning to drive!

The Big 10 (Months)

Well, Quinn is ten months old, and I haven't really blogged about her since she was 5 months old -- that's a whole Quinn half-life. It's hard to believe it's been that long... the second 5 months definitely flew by even faster than the first five.

She is a playful girl who has six teeth now. She gets around and gets into everything -- she has been crawling for two and a half months, and pulls herself up and "cruises" (that's walking while holding onto furniture, etc) at every opportunity... we are pretty sure she'll be walking before her first birthday (and are appropriately terrified!).

Sadly, my camera has broken, which has seriously derailed my "picture a day" project, but here are some nice shots from the past month.


Quinn made her debut at the Miller picnic, a reunion of my maternal grandmother's side of the family -- and she was the youngest clan member, and so got to be in the traditional "youngest and oldest" photograph.


Here she is taking in the bathtub-warm waters off the Mississippi Gulf Coast with her Daddy.


She's very much in the "monkey see, monkey do" phase. And, of course, takes dental hygiene very seriously.


And here she is frolicking in the living room of our new place! (Yes, we moved again.) We are all really enjoying living a home that includes a little room just for Quinn to sleep in -- we're getting a lot more sleep now.

We continue to be totally impressed with her. Happy ten-month birthday, Quinn! We love you!

Do I Look Like My Mama?

Well, here are some shots of her vaguely posed like my baby picture.

Here's Quinn:


Here's Baby me:


And here's a little better smile from Quinn:


I have trouble catching the full magic of her smiles on camera. Perhaps that's because the squealing isn't picked up along with it... well, seriously, it's probably because she gives her biggest smiles to people face-to-face. And I haven't yet figured out how to implant a camera in my face. :)

What do you think?

Do I Look Like My Daddy?

So, I had a silly idea that we should pose Quinn like baby pictures of her parents to help decide who she looks more like. The challenge is that I really don't know how old we each were when we got our first portraits taken. I suspect we were older (around 6 months) than she is now (3 1/2 months). But, we got the one to compare with Tim.

Here's Quinn:



And here's baby Tim:



Or does this one look more like him?



What do you think?

Stay tuned for "Do I Look Like My Mama?"...

Money Shot

With a nice camera, great sunlight, and an adorable subject, taking photos is really fun! And sometimes they turn out incredibly well, like this one.

Quinn had a doctor's appointment today, and she weighs 13 lbs, 14 oz (90th-95th percentile), is 23 1/2 inches long (75th-90th percentile), and has a head diameter of 43 cm (off the charts!). She was very sad about her shots -- she cried loudly, but didn't make a special new, "ouch that hurts" noise, like I thought she might. It was just loud crying with extra flailing of limbs. Fortunately, the crying was over pretty quickly, and she fell asleep pretty much as soon as we got her into the car seat.

...And the sleeping continues!

This is what a happy, well-rested baby looks like. Quinn continues to sleep like a champion. She has slept 5 1/2 hours or more 6 nights in the past week -- and 4 of those were 6 1/2 hours or more. We are feeling much better rested and loving it! Time will tell if this will last, but I'm just appreciating it.

In other news, Quinn (yeah, right, you didn't think it would be about anyone else, did you?) is discovering her hands. Several times in the past couple days, I have caught Quinn looking at her right hand -- sometimes moving it around a bit, but a lot of times just staring very calmly and intently. She will grab things that are placed in her hand, and try to reach for things. She still doesn't have total control of her arms -- she gave her self a good whack in the face with a rattle two days ago. It was very sad, and shocking to her -- she had her mad, crying face with the mouth wide open, but no sound came out for the first 20 seconds or so. We've decided to stick to softer toys for now.

I should also note that in this photo, she is smiling AT the camera -- I was holding it out, and she smiled when the little red light came on, looking at it rather than my face.

She just keeps getting more interesting!