Olivia's Baptism aka Only the Strong Survive

Baptism

Whew! We made it through mostly unscathed. Daddy seems to be doing pretty good after surviving near strangulation, my back is killing me and Olivia is still a little off - way too much activity/stimulation for her.

Pics to come, details here. It all started with a crazy week. The first part was spent celebrating my mom's birthday, which was fun but busy. I worked Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and Michael was either out of town or frantically trying to get the gate at the storage units working on Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday night, we started working on stuff for the shower. Friday was super busy. I picked up Olivia from day care and we went on a marathon shopping trip to get all the stuff to finish the new bathroom. Mom went along (big thanks) and we got it done then went out to dinner.

Saturday was crazy. Mom came up and helped as we cleaned, organized and prepared for the party. After things were done enough that I could get the shopping done, I took off for that endeavor. Three or four stores later, I had everything on the list. Back home for more work - this time with help from Michele (yea!!!) . After we were too exhausted to do any more, we left to have dinner and hang out for a little bit at a friend's party.

Sunday - get up, feed baby, work, work, work getting ready. Shower, dress and leave for church. Aunt Bobbie took the first round of church wrestling, then passed off to me as we waiting for the big event. The baptism went fine - I wrestled Olivia while she grabbed Daddy's tie and tried to strangle him. It was quite amusing for everyone. She SERIOUSLY wanted to splash in that little pool of water, but I held tight and tried to distract her with the flowers on the alter. Thanks to Tim for taking pictures - I hope he has one of Olivia strangling Daddy!!! After the actual Baptism we went back to the pew for the third round, which lasted about 5 minutes before she started getting loud. I then took her out and played with her in the cry room. She would not let me put her down at first, as she was getting really tired, but after a while she played on the floor with no problem. Of course, it helped a bunch that Jordon came in and played with her!!!

She fell asleep within 3 minutes on the way home. I put her in her bed and she never made a sound. Somehow she managed to sleep for about 1.5 hours in the middle of all of the noise and chaos. We had 47 people here. We tried to keep it small by only inviting family. It was all family and Godparents. Michael and I ran around like crazy most of the time trying to keep things going smoothly.

Olivia woke up and ate, but was clearly overwhelmed by it all. There was too much going on and way too many people. She pretty much maintained her stoic little stare most of the day. After everyone left and Michael and I were cleaning up, she tried to climb in one of the roasters that was on the floor. I set her in the roaster and she played there for at least 10 minutes. It was too cute. After that, she played with the roaster racks for another 10 minutes. Today, she is certainly more clingy than normal, but enjoying her mama and daddy time.