Little Miss’ Baby Dedication

Last Sunday, a week after she turned one, we did Little Miss’ Baby Dedication. As Island ECC practices believer’s baptism (i.e. when you are old enough to choose to be baptized), it was more a step for us parents, dedicating her to the Lord. I thought of it as a reminder of how we raise our kids for a time, whereupon they grow up and become their own person – kind of like us being good stewards of our blessings but to remember they come from the Lord. We don’t “own” two children, and I hoped the reminder would make me a better parent. Reminding myself I have to learn to let go someday would also temper any tendency to go Achievement Junkie on The Rockstars.

(Most) eyes closed in prayer

Rockstar gives a high five!

So does Little Miss!

I also felt we needed this step because parenting is…… this huge crushing responsibility that threatens to overwhelm me (That’s another human being! Someday that’s someone’s husband/ wife/ mum/ dad/ best friend/ boss/ subordinate/ let’s all hyperventilate now!)

Sometimes it’s like I pass other parents who have 3, 4 kids in tow and I’m all WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? YOU HAVE KIDS! I CAN SEE THEM, THEY’RE RIGHT THERE! SO HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY WALK CALMLY DOWN A STREET LIKE YOU CAN BE ALL NORMAL? (New readers: this is meant to be funny.)

Am I the only one who passes those SPCA posters with the huge puppy dog eyes and the phrase “a pet is a lifetime commitment” and think O…..Kay. And Then What Do They Say To The People Who Also Have Kids? And Where Posters? Freak. Out. ….Now. You can mostly spoil dogs right, they aren’t going to grow up and ruin someone’s life. Unless you are my mother because my mother is the Grand Master of Dog Spoiling…………

But seriously – when I worked and kids were the last thing on my mind, I formed the idea that I couldn’t do anything without the Lord. Lotsa market people are religious or superstitious, because it’s a pretty clear illustration of You Can Do Everything Right And Things Can Go Horribly Wrong Anyway. That you are not in control after all. Like the Titanic and Icebergs. You have fancy-wancy risk assessment software to manage this or that tiny movement in the market you have invested in (and really, used to be people would react over like, a 0.3% increase in default probability which is such a massive contrast to all the belly-ups nowadays), you hedge til the cows come home and have all the colorful spreadsheets, the ones with the macros written from scratch, but then you hit Big Fat Iceberg and so we’re all gonna die.

It’s not like I think of viewing God as a good luck charm in the markets, more like I feel I need Him in my life in order to face the challenges life inevitably brings. (And there is no greater challenge than parenting. Social media alone is just a sea of icebergs.) Viewing that current difficulty in life as something He has allowed in order to make me a better version of myself might help me handle it better.

Through the decade+ in the market, I got more and more convinced that I couldn’t achieve if I distanced myself from Him by not trying my sincere best to honor Him in what I said or did, or if my heart wasn’t right. And that was “just” markets and investments, when Yours Truly deliberately did things like forbid RMs from telling me if I was dealing for This Client We Just Bumped Into At Starbucks And Please Let’s Speak In Account Numbers.

Parenting, on the other hand – children. Person. Little. Depends on you. And worst of all? You love them more than you ever thought possible. And- and- get this: You’re supposed to raise ’em. Yes. You.

How much more do I need the Lord to guide me now? How much more do I need my heart to be in the right place now?

Yeh.

So here we are. Oh, and Rockstar kinda picked out what Little Miss was wearing because he had a matching shirt he’d agreed to wear that day. I added the flower band because I just bought it on a whim from Zara. Rockstar decided the white looked better than the pink. I’m not sure he looked up long enough but I agreed so it all worked out.

And then we went home…. and had Cake. What a Cake it was. It was Cake so good I am addressing it with a capital C to pay it proper respect. Best ordering efforts and all that, this is actually a Sweet 16 cake and Kings had them sell us the topper from the photograph as well and then I cut off the “6” with a scissors. Because of how her original cake turned out last week. Rockstar got to blow out the candle. Another bonus for all the times she’s pulling him about by the shirt and swarming up him.

The Rockstars wrestling over not touching the cake because what Little Miss wants to do is palm-slap it

See? It all works out in the end, we had Baby Dedication Cake. And it was chocolate orange-flavored. And it was good. And Rockstar didn’t even manage to finish one slice but his friends living nearby really enjoyed it.

And here, a few more pictures of Cake, as it left the store. Though in the interests of full disclosure I have to say they still spelled Little Miss’ name wrong on it. It would seem the fabulousness of Cake however kept everyone else from noticing it during pickup and even when Kings filled the electronic order form (correctly, I might add) except me – when we finally took it out of the box at home after church.

And so our baby was Dedicated, and there was Cake, and it was all Good.

Pink and blue… Little Miss’ on the left, Rockstar’s almost-5-year-old one on the right…

Praise the Lord.