Rome Sweet Home: Part 3, The Baptism!

Father Brian Reedy has been at all six of our children's baptisms, and has now presided over half of them.

 Saturday morning we got up and started getting ready for the big day!  We took the Metro over to the church, Santa Susana, an English speaking parish near the embassy.  Bobby took a little nap in the Ergo on the way and woke up ready to receive the Holy Spirit and enter the Church.  Some friends of ours that just happened to plan a Thanksgiving trip to Rome were able to join us for the baptism as well.  It was a cozy little group of us that was made up mostly of children.

Getting ready for the big event

 It was a beautiful ceremony, wonderful friends, and memories to last a lifetime.  Too bad Bobby won't remember it.  Good thing I have so many great pictures.  I have more and better photos from this baptism than any other child's because there were lots of people taking pictures with really good cameras instead of my plain old camera.  I'm no photographer.

Drew was tracing the sign of the cross on Bobby's forehead.

One of our friends that had planned that Thanksgiving Rome trip that I talked about.  Little did he know that he'd end up doing one of the readings.

I adore my angel baby!

Here are some of those precious children witnesses I spoke of.

All the boys have worn this gown I bought in Belgium, and every one of them has tried to eat the ribbons that tie in front.  I was trying to untangle them from his grasp.

The older three children were sitting in the pews and the two two year olds were taking advantage of their parents having their hands full and wandering around a bit.

Oh, look we have an extra two year old!  My godson sneaked in this picture.

 We had some trouble getting a decent picture of the six of them.

 Bobby is blessed with some pretty amazing godparents too.  They are really faithful and faith-filled friends.  What a beautiful picture of the three of them!

 After the baptism, we walked over to the Capuchin Crypt decorated with bones.  The kids were not nearly as impressed as I thought they would be.  Then we went next door to Eataly that serves hot dogs, hamburgers, and, of course, craft beers.  I was not a big fan of the food, but the french fries were good and the beer was pretty good too.  It was probably my fault for ordering the spicy barbecue sauce in Italy.  It was more like a sweet and sour sauce, and not spicy at all.  I had a pumpkin beer.  Normally I am not a beer drinker, but my husband is trying really hard to make me one.

A celebratory beer...I'm not a huge beer fan, but if it's easy on the hops then I can handle it better.  From the look of it, Bobby may be a beer drinker one day, huh?

Then we took a quick tour of Santa Maria Maggiore and went to St. Ignatius of Loyola for a Mass of thanksgiving for Bobby at the altar that is on the relics of St. Robert Bellarmine's incorrupt body.  How crazy is that?!  The very saint he named for!  A couple of Father Brian Reedy's friends that were visiting Rome the same week all the way from Texas came to the baptism and held Bobby for me for the Mass.  that was a huge blessing because my back was killing me by this time (now 4pm) after having him in my arms or in the carrier the whole day.  The cutest part was that he was so elated and happy during the whole Mass, making the sweetest giggles and coos.  It was perfect.

 I should mention that Bobby pooped out of his diaper right before I put him in his baptism gown all over his white, adorable outfit he was going to wear the rest of the day.  So we had to default to the extra outfit that had been in the backpack all week which was orange and pretty much ruined this last picture.  :(  The bright side was that he didn't ruin his baptism gown.

Saints Robert Bellarmine and Cecilia, pray for us.