Rachel's Baptism

Yesterday we had our little angel baptized as an official member of the Catholic Church. Duane isn't Catholic, but when we first started dating, I told him that it was important to me to have our children baptized, because that is part of my belief system. Because Duane isn't particularly active in his religion, he agreed, and so, Rachel Louise was baptized! It was a wonderful day, although she wasn't exactly thrilled with the water getting poured on her or with people trying to touch her head.
After the ceremony, we went back to our house and celebrated with family and friends. We thought it would be a fairly small gathering, but it turned into a HUGE affair! We were happy with the turnout but it was insanely huge insanely fast!! We appreciated all the help I got from everyone and all the warm wishes. It was such a special day for all of us.

Power to the People!

So most of you know that the majority of Columbus residents lost power for some amount of time this week. We were pretty lucky -- we only lost ours for 22 hours or so. Still, every minute seems like forever when you have no idea what is going on or when your lights will work again. Especially when you have a little one who doesn't like the dark so much. The lights went out when we were at my parents' house, celebrating birthdays. They also lost a tree in their backyard...it's kind of sad, really. That tree has been there longer than I have, and one big windstorm took it out. I am just thankful it happened before we were sitting outside with the kids. The Lord works in mysterious ways, I suppose. He took out the tree before it could take any one of us out.
While all of this has been exciting (and has redirected the focus of several disappointed OSU fans -- what an AWFUL showing...by far the worst yet), I have even more exciting news! Rachel is starting to sleep through the night! I don't know if it is the swaddling blanket we are using, the white noise machine Auntie Kimmie gave us, or some combination thereof, but she has started sleeping upwards of 6 hours this week. It actually makes me disappointed when she only sleeps 4 hours!
We also got our pictures back from Rachel & Aiden's photo shoot. Here are some samples -- they are too cute, aren't they?

My little wonder!

Binkie 101

I found the perfect situational metaphor for my journey into motherhood.

I didn't register for many pacifiers. I found a couple cute ones and put those on my registry, but I figured people would buy me them on their own, picking out all the cute designs they found. This is how I previously thought of binkies...I went by which ones were cutest. I even have a couple Ohio State binkies, just to keep up the spirit. I knew that they made different types of pacifiers -- this one is better for 0-6 months, that one is better for orthodontics, this one is better to protect against SIDS, etc. I envisioned Rachel taking any binkie I gave her, so I didn't worry much about any of that.

I didn't know that babies have binkie preferences. Rachel wouldn't take a binkie at all in the beginning. I longed for the day I would be able to pop one in her mouth, because she was using me as a giant human pacifier, and it was beginning to get tedious. I began to feel like a walking boob. Hungry or not, she used me to pacify herself, and any time I tried to shove a binkie in her mouth, she made a disgusted face and spit it out. Why would she want that when she had the real thing right in front of her?

I lamented about this issue, and mothers all around me started to ask me, "Did you try a different brand? Sometimes babies like one brand better than another."

What? Hmmm. I never thought about that. I honestly assumed she would take a binkie like it was a nipple and that would be the end of it.

So I went to the store and bought a few different brands from those I already had. One after another, I attempted to pop them into her mouth, and one after another she spit them out in disgust. I even tried coating them in breast milk or gripe water (another concoction of which I was unaware), but she wasn't fooled. I must have 7 different brands of binkies.

I just accepted my daughter would not take a binkie. I took her to my sister's house for the first day of daycare, and wouldn't you know it...she took a binkie from her! It's like she needed to not have me around as an option in order to accept the binkie.

Excited, I started trying all the different binkies again!

She spit them all out. Except one.

She found the one binkie she likes, and you better believe I pop that thing in her mouth whenever she starts fussing!! I had to learn by trial-and-error, and I feel like that is the perfect metaphor for my experience as a mother so far. I am basically clueless, try a bunch of different things, and when Rachel is ready, one of them works. The key part being "when Rachel is ready." She's in charge, and I am along for the ride.