Our little one has certainly been learning some new tricks and he was
putting them into play during our recent ice storm. We're definitely
into pulling ourselves up and standing with assistance...be it one of us
or one of his taller toys. Sometimes the toys aren't all that great at
keeping him on his feet but he'll stand for a lot longer
than you'd expect for an eight-month old! And when he does go bump, at
least the diaper makes for a nice pad... :)
Nicholas also taught Grammy a new trick today! She came home with us
after Mass on Sunday because of the worsening weather and the snowfall
and ended up staying a few days with us.
You think we were joking about him being half monkey, eh?
Yes, we can pull ourselves up to the top of the bar and flip over it if
we're left unattended. When presented with that little trick, that
mattress got lowered straightaway to make it a little more difficult for
little one to do his Great Escape routine. Hopefully, he
won't require the same measures that his Daddy did when he was in the
hospital...i.e. being put into a cage because he had a habit of escaping
and freaking out the staff of Womack Army Hospital at Fort Bragg! :)
I give him another four months and we'll probably drop the mattress
again, if not sooner! Guess we'd better get on the stick and order that
day bed a little bit sooner... :)
Happy birthday to Gramps who shares his birthday with Martin Luther
King, Jr.! Someone is closing in on a certain milestone birthday
next year...we promise there won't be too much black involved in the
celebration! :)
I think our dear readers can imagine what we were doing today based on
yesterday's BLOG entry. Aunt Judy's funeral was today in Fayetteville
and Daddy was tapped to man the rails on the casket. Father Kelly
of St. Patrick's in Fayetteville presided over the ceremony...he's
another one of the really good priests who served Mommy when she went to
St. Patrick's.
The first part of the funeral was a service at the funeral home's
chapel which was actually rather nice and much better than I would
have expected. The service was a variation on a Catholic funeral Mass.
Daddy also had a chance to give his first
eulogy which you can read if you
wish (it's not exactly what I said that day but it's close enough for
government work...I was shooting from the heart and the hip up there,
as it were!).
After the service, we manned the casket and loaded it into the hearse
for her final trip through the streets of Fayetteville. The Cumberland
County Sheriffs seconded four deputies who cleared the way for us to
the cemetery on Raeford Road (a good 10-15 minutes from downtown where
the funeral home was on Ramsey Street).
Once at the cemetery, it was time to pull the casket out and lay it on a
platform near the graveside where Father Kelly gave the final funeral
service. One nice twist that I wasn't expecting was that Aunt Judy's
funeral flag was in brought in and presented to Lee on behalf of the
President and a grateful nation. That was a very nice touch...
After the graveside service, we retired to Aunt Judy's house for some
time together and refreshments. Throughout the funeral and afterward,
Nicholas was a little angel. Other than a squawk for food/formula, he
was generally a content little guy and was happy for cuddling and play
time. For his first funeral, he certainly comported himself well...
We packed up the Escape for a quick trip to Fayetteville for Aunt Judy's
wake and viewing in downtown off Ramsey Street. Aunt Judy (actually
my stepfather's mother) but we agreed early on that Aunt Judy was a lot
easier to deal with and the name rather stuck!
The room was filled with quite a few flower arrangements (including
one we had sent with white roses which was one of Aunt Judy's favourite
flowers...I was quite happy with the effort the florist in Fayetteville
put into it). A CD player had some big-band music from the 1940's cued
and Aunt Judy was at the head of the room in the casket next to her
American flag (she served in the Women's Auxiliary Corps during World
War II, something a lot of people didn't know).
This turned out to be a nice thing being able to see people that I
haven't seen in many years and swap some sea stories about my times with
them and Aunt Judy. She used to joke that she was going to live to be
110 and make everyone round her miserable as a result...and I honestly
felt that if anyone had a good shot at it, she did! She literally looked
like someone who time just plain forgot. For someone who was 82, she'd
have the age guessers at the State Fair fooled every time to the tune of
20 years!
It was nice seeing Anne (Lee's sister) and her family who live in
Greensboro. I hadn't seen Sandy or Dan in quite a while and like me
they were some of Aunt Judy's many strays...kids who came
into her life and were forever changed as a result of it. Then there
was the Girl Scout delegation including Meghann's former troop
co-leader and her daughters who both took a liking to Nicholas. If
Karma had her way, I think she would have taken Nicholas with her...but
certainly not without a fight!
In fact, there were more than a few cute baby mode
addictions going on at this viewing...Nicholas just couldn't help
himself! Once the cascading reaction started, it's rather like trying
to shut off Chernobyl when the control rods were wrecked...i.e. ain't
happening!
Nicholas has shown an innate sense of how one behaves when one is in a
solemn situation such as a baptism or a Mass and this was no different.
He really was a trooper even with a tooth poking through that was
obviously hurting him. You know he's not feeling so hot when he
refuses food! But for the most part, he was content
enough to play with his toys or be cuddled...or both. Between Mommy
and Karma, he was certainly getting the cuddle and play time.
At the end of the viewing, it was time for us to say goodbye and pay
our respects before heading north to Clayton for the evening.
Today's Mass was a special one as it is the Feast of the Baptism
of Christ celebrating Jesus' own baptism by John the Baptist.
As Father Charles warmed to his homily, he had some rather interesting
takes on the rite of baptism. He had noted this yesterday but reiterated
it for the audience that baptism is the only rite in the entire Catholic
liturgy that starts out with a series of questions! The general form
is rejection of sin followed by a profession of faith and ending with
"what do you ask of the church?".
He noted that in his years of ministry he's probably baptized about 600
babies and he has yet to encounter anyone who answered anything other
than "I do" and to the last question "baptism". Father Charles did
joke that the one question that he has never asked is if the parents
actually meant what they answered to those questions!
(One thing you can say about Father Charles is that he has a wonderful
wit and I've yet to hear one of his sermons where he doesn't evoke a
few laughs...who says sermons have to be dull and boring!?!)
But that point really gets you to thinking about just what you were
doing when you put your child up for baptism. You're not merely
answering yada, yada, yada to the questions...you're
promising in front of your friends, family, and God that you're going to
do what you say you're going to do and raise that child in the Catholic
tradition.
But that decision wasn't taken right there on the spot or even in the
months leading up to the baptismal rite. Nope, that one was actually
taken in the long stretch between Wilmington and Benson on I-40 on the
way back from a holiday at Ocean Isle well before you were conceived
(about a year or so if memory serves properly)! Daddy was definitely
the complicating factor on this one...the best description of his
religious experiences was either eclectic or perhaps more
appropriately that he was an ecclesiasticial mutt! For
someone who is usually so anal-retentive about order and organisation,
this was one curious exception to that rule.
In thirty-plus years, I had encountered pretty much all of the major
faiths and/or denominations in one form or another and had read
everything from the Bible to the Koran and
the Bhagavad Gita and back again. There was certainly a
lot of good things about all of them and coupled with a sense of right
and wrong was more than enough at the time to find what peace I felt I
was going to find in that time. That didn't mean the journey had ended
but rather that it had taken a different focus and a more abstract
search of what is.
It's well and good to have a broad view of spiritual tradition but that
doesn't do a whole lot for a little person who is taking their own
halting steps into their own view of the universe and their place within
that universe! The little one needs consistency and order until they
are able to find their own voice and add it to the chorus. That will
come soon enough, little one...trust me on that! If eight months can
seem as a blink of an eye, you'll be at the point where you're asking
your own questions and seeking your own answers well before we're
prepared to deal with that inquisition! But I certainly look forward
to that day... :)
So it was without hesitation that I agreed to raise whatever children
may come in the Catholic tradition to provide that sense of stability
and order so that the quest for spiritual knowledge would be well-
grounded as mine was so many years ago. Not really realising it at
the time, there was already a small Catholic community ready to help
make that journey successful. That's really key!
What I hadn't appreciated until yesterday (and reinforced in today's
homily) was just what that sort of community and the larger parish
community can mean to that journey. One person off by their lonesome
as I often was is ineffectual...but our small community was part of a
larger community. As they say in government, a billion here and a
billion there and soon you're talking about real money. We often
concentrate on the details of getting to community and that tends to
obscure what the community really means to us knowing that we're not all
alone in that night at the hour of the wolf! And for the first time in
quite a long while, I feel that I've found a place where I feel more at
home spiritually than I have ever felt before and it really helps having
a couple of wonderful priests like Father Charles and Father Mel who
truly understand people who have seen other traditions and yet can still
make them feel quite welcome and cherished.
Think about the questions asked at the baptism...and the wider implication
of community. That's a pretty powerful promise that we are making...a
promise that is one of the most meaningful we will ever make. Those
sorts of promises cannot be broken...it cannot be allowed to happen no
matter how easy it may seem. Father Charles, we really did
mean what we promised and what we asked of the church!
What we didn't expect was Father Charles pointing us out in the
congregation. Apparently, baptisms on this weekend are a rare enough
event in the parish that I'm guessing he had some bragging rights with
his colleagues in the Raleigh diocese. Who knows, St. Eugene's may
well have had the only one in Raleigh as far as we know... :)
Then it was time for Father Charles to do his procession throughout the
congregation and give us all a baptism of sorts. I will say one thing
for Father Charles...his aim is deadly accurate right into Daddy's ear!
But that's OK... :)
The day would turn out to be a bit bittersweet, however. Last Thursday,
I had a health and welfare mission to Fayetteville to come to the side
of Lee's mother who was felled by a massive anterior coronary (ironically
after getting a clean bill of health from her doctor the day before...
for a lady of 82, you'd be hard-pressed to think she was older than 60!).
Listening to the story from beginning to end and listening to the doctor
and others, I had little doubt that we were looking at the end game and
that she was already gone from us. Aunt Judy ended up passing away this
evening peacefully and into the grace of God. She was a life-long
practicing Catholic and in a strange way, it seemed rather appropriate
that she would pass on the weekend of the baptism of a little one she
had met just a few months before.
Nicholas' first significant religious event was held this morning at
St. Eugene's Catholic Church in Wendell, NC. Father Charles Khonde (one
of the two priests serving St. Eugene's...Father Charles and Father
Mel are easily the coolest priests I've ever had the pleasure of
meeting!).
Gathered round us were friends and family and a special thanks goes to
Mike and Julie Morrison who agreed to stand as Nicholas' godparents.
The tradition of the godparents is an ancient one that goes back to the
days of the Roman Empire. Back then, Christian churches were only
starting to take hold and it was not uncommon for new converts to have
parents who were not Christian. The godparents were elected to serve as
your advocate and voice in the Church and were to help guide you along
your spiritual journey. Nowadays, they still serve that spiritual role
as advocates for the new member of the Church and generally would be
willing to take in the child and raise them in the preferred faith.
Once we had gathered in the sanctuary, Nicholas was dressed in his
baptismal gown that was hand-made by a friend of our great
friends from the days that Gramps and Daddy were stationed in Jackson,
Mississippi. The gown is utterly gorgeous and will be a precious
remembrance of the baptism ceremony. And if you ever want amazing
hand-made outfits for a baby, have we got a seamstress for you! :)
The Baptism ceremony itself was quite a wondrous thing and Father
Charles really outdid himself on this one! The ceremony is quite
straightforward (most of the forms are the same as the scene in
The GodFather except that we didn't schedule any hits on
mobsters whilst it was going on...a parade on our wedding day is as
exciting as we get)! The ceremony itself is almost a mini-Mass and
before long, Nicholas was annointed with a couple of oils and water
was poured over his head. He really liked that so Father Charles gave
him two more splashes than you ordinarily get! The baptismal pedestal
was the original one consecrated by the church and was recently
fortified by one of Grammy's neighbours Fitz (he's really an amazing
carpenter!) and that was a nice touch that he and his lovely wife
Adrienne could see Nicholas baptised using the fortified pedestal.
Nicholas was fantastic through the entire ceremony which is rather
unusual for baptisms (but not for Nicholas, he's generally an agreeable
chap except for the beginning and end of his feedings!). At times, he
was very captivated by Father Charles and was definitely focused on the
proceedings at hand. Way to go Nicholas!
Also, it turns out that this weekend is the celebration of the feast of the
baptism of Christ. Father Charles was thrilled to have a baptism during
this time as it's the best time for a baptism! I wish we could say we
were that clever but it was just a happy coincidence based on the
weekend our godparents could come to North Carolina!
After the ceremony and the ritual sacrifice of several rolls of film,
we headed out for lunch at Knightdale Seafood and BBQ, a
favourite restaurant of ours that's not surprisingly in Knightdale!
After lunch and cake, it was time to head back to Ms. Pat's for some
relaxation, games, and a nice dinner. Whilst there, we got some
pictures of Nicholas in the snow before it all melts away. Daddy wanted
a snowball fight but was overruled...guess we'll try to get a snowball
fight the next time... :)
Unfortunately, the it was time to wish Gramps a safe journey home to
Port Orange to Nicholas' beach house! Julie, Mike, and their children
are heading back to Evansville on Monday and we wish them a safe
journey as well! :)
We have another first to report today...Nicholas' first tooth has finally
poked through! Before we know it, the boy is going to be demanding
pork chops and steaks to exercise those teeth... ;)-
As our friends and family were gathering in Raleigh for Nicholas'
baptism, we were quite surprised by other forces coming together.
All of our weather reports yesterday indicated that the expected snow
event was going to be a few flurries with little to no accumulation.
Yeah, right!
What the weather guys weren't considering was that another storm full of
Gulf of Mexico moisture was coming north as the other system was coming
south and they converged right over Raleigh. That meant we went from
a few flurries to 2-4 inches on the ground!
We tried calling Gramps to let him know that the roads and the weather
were much worse than anticipated but he got an updated report and was
in the Raleigh area right about noon. Whilst he hung out at his hotel,
our prospective godparents were leaving Evansville, IN and were going to
encounter this at RDU International Airport in the afternoon.
Fortunately, the roads stayed pretty clear all day long and the expected
icing at night really wasn't as hideous as expected. There were at least
600 accidents in the Raleigh area that day but fortunately, none of the
most important parties were involved!
And compared to the flurries Nicholas experienced on 19 December 2003,
this was an honest-to-goodness snowstorm and fortunately for us, it
was without the ice that usually shuts down the city and makes travel
and life rather miserable!
After poking about a bit with the invitation feature for the new
announcement mailing list, it turns out that I was incorrect in thinking
that a Yahoo account is required for the list.
Actually, if all you're interested in is the mailing list itself...then
all you need to register is your EMAIL address. If you want the
additional features of the group (pictures, calendar, etc.), those
require the Yahoo account. Sorry for the confusion! :)
Eagle-eyed readers of the BLOG will notice that the Links
section has returned on the right side of the page.
A new group has just been created on Yahoo! called
[nicholas_fans] (which we all are, right? :)
Gone are the days of polling the BLOG to see if anything changed (and
getting frustrated at the webmaster who is a bit slow with the updates)!
Now, whenever I make a change to the site, I'll post a message to the
group which is automatically sent to all of the members of the group
prompting you to click that link that you know you want to click! ;)-
I intend to use the group for these announcements and for ones
with the latest statistics for his checkups and other noteworthy
events. The group does allow for members to post messages as well and
all members will see your EMAIL.
If your EMAIL is targeted for the webmaster only, kindly use the
Hits Line...errr...EMAIL Webmaster! link provided under
the group links! We take requests and dedications and play only the
songs you want to hear...and now back to the BLOG on WFOX... :)
Joining the group is done by going to the group's home page and click the
Join Group button (the link is available in the Links
section). You'll need a Yahoo account to join...the account is free and
the groups are advertiser-sponsored as they add an advert at the end of
each EMAIL (unfortunately, that's the price we pay for letting
corporations on the Internet!). If you already have
a Yahoo account, just sign in with your account and you're in business.
Once I approve your membership in the group, you'll receive the group
EMAILs. There are some other features I've not played round with yet
on the group home page...it'll be an interesting journey of discovery!
The really exciting stuff will remain on the BLOG as that server is
better suited for hosting a home page!
A new year dawns and with it our hopes and dreams for a peaceful and
less exciting year than 2003. There is no way to know what the year
will bring but hopefully we've put a lot of the challenges behind us.
There are some interesting events coming our way with Nicholas' baptism
in January and his first birthday in May (it's hard to believe we're
almost there...it seems like yesterday we were welcoming him to the
world...where does the time go?!?).
Hopefully, we should have enough interesting stories to fill these
pages. One change will be a new announcement mailing list that will
announce changes to the BLOG so you don't have to constantly poll the
pages. Stay tuned for that to come online in January! :)