The Baptism & Back to Work (Picture post follows)

Today seems like a pretty huge day for our family so it seemed appropriate to get off my duff and post an update! Our latest major milestone is that Kristen goes back to work full-time and we transition into being 2 full-time working parents. Because Maddy was never really a candidate for daycare, we (i.e. Kristen) found our nanny Taylor and today marks her first official day on the job. We've only met a few times but I'm very confident that she's going to do a fantastic job taking care of our little girl and of course, Baxter (who totally scores in this deal).

Because of my awesome work schedule, we'll only need her 3 days a week and the other two are going to be daddy-daughter days as I attempt to work from home and take care of our infant. We've done a couple trial runs of that setup so far and it's gone OK but as I've learned, everything is subject to change. I will admit to being very fright-cited about the prospect of spending an extra few days with her during the week but I really think I can do it. Time will tell.

The other major milestone over the weekend was Madeline's baptism . Living in the controlled chaos that is being new parents, her baptism snuck up on us. We've been going nine million miles per hour (just nine, 10 will be when Maddy goes mobile) since late July and by the time we sat down at baptism class 8 days ago, it just felt like one more thing we had to do. Thankfully, the class was structured in a way that made me realize how special this particular sacrament is to me. I'm never going to win any awards for world's best Catholic but sitting in the class, it really made me reflect on how fortunate and blessed our journey has been. It was only five months ago when I can remember sitting in the church praying to just be able to hold our tiny daughter that day and for her to stay strong. Flash forward and here we are, ready to introduce Madeline into our faith. Perhaps blessed is an understatement.

For the actual baptism, our little girl was an angel as always. She absolutely loves water so when the priest poured it over her head, she was initially startled by the dip down with her eyes going wide but then, with the water came the smiles. She slept quietly through the rest of the ceremony with the oil on her head and blessings in her ears and mouth, content to suck on her pacifier and snooze the afternoon away. The priest even commented that it was OK just this time for her to sleep in church.

Without going into a million Maddy stories (teaser for 6 month post from Kristen next week), she's doing amazing and I always seem to find myself commenting on how easy it has seemed so far. She's somewhere around 12-13 pounds and growing bigger, stronger, and faster everyday. Health wise, everything is A-OK and we're into the wait-and-see phase as far as any developmental delay. Teething has started and that has made her a little more squawky but nothing the super team of Kristen and I can't handle.

Her favorite thing in the entire world is a purple moose that we've creatively named Mr. Moose. In the mornings right after I'm done feeding her, I'll usually put her down on her play mat and she'll start wailing away at him. As a proud Papa, I have dubbed her actions the Hulk smash and it cracks me up every time. Sometimes she'll mix it up with some pulling and chomping but mostly, its smashing!

It's not really news but she started smiling a couple months back and at this point, I think she might be refining into a very precise weapon of Daddy destruction. That smile of hers makes my day each and every time and I'm sure she'll start using it for her own purposes before I even realize it.

All of the pictures are coming in a follow-up and separate post but before I get to that, I wanted to thank all of our friends and family that came out this weekend to help celebrate our special day. We were very touched to have such a big crowd in the church and it made a great day even better.