Blessings

Yeah.  I'm a little behind on documenting life here in this 3-ring circus of ours.  Hahaha.  For today's post, I'm going to take it WAY back, to a couple days after Christmas, when we decided to bless Isaac while Grandma and Grandpa were still in this neck of the woods.  :)  

I decided to get a Blessing Day photo shoot out of the way that morning, before church, when I could be fairly certain that Isaac would still be clean and {hopefully} cooperative.  Success on both counts!  :)   One thing I didn't even THINK about before his big day was that his blessing outfit was going to be a little too big.  I had been planning all along to use the same outfit that Alex wore (since he was blessed during the winter, too), but what I wasn't thinking about was the fact that Alex was already 3 1/2 months old when we did his blessing, whereas Isaac was not quite 7 weeks old on his big day.  There's quite a bit of difference in size from 7 weeks to 3 1/2 months!  Hahaha.  Luckily, it fit well enough, and I just had to cuff the sleeves a bit.

 Cute little hidden feet.  :)

 And the cuffed sleeves.

One last shot before heading off to church.

Everyone met up with us at the church, and once inside, we took up an entire back pew.  When it came time for Scott to give Isaac the blessing, it was sweet to see my nephew Sam (newly returned from his mission to Japan) join the circle along with Scott and Scott's dad.  It's always hard to focus and remember what is said in a baby blessing when there are other kids that I'm trying to keep under control as well, but one thing that stood out to me and that Scott repeated a few different times, was the importance of faith.  And that if Isaac would develop faith in God, it would serve him well in the world today.  I wasn't able to see up front, but both Scott and his dad reported that Isaac rewarded them all with a huge smile when the blessing was done. So sweet!  Especially considering that at almost 7 weeks, his smiles were still few and far between.  :)

 Group shot after church.

 Look at those faces.  :)

 That's my squad!  ;)

 Gordon, Isaac, and Scott

It's been almost a month since we blessed the baby, but I've been thinking a lot since then about blessings in general.  I think most people would agree that having a baby is hard.  Not that it's not worth it!  Just that it's not easy.  There's an extra human being to take care of -- and a completely helpless and fragile one at that; there's not a lot of sleep going on; in our case, there are still 5 other human beings to take care of as well; and there's still a house to keep up, meals to make, laundry and dishes to do, etc.  I think one of the biggest blessings I've been given this time around is the gift of perspective.  I've had the thought come to me on more than one occasion that this {sleepless} phase is temporary and won't last forever. And the concept that everything is relative has come in handy as well.  Isaac is probably the second worst sleeper of all my babies, but even with that, he's NOWHERE near as hard as Sophie was.  So there's that.  :)  And even though I have 6 kids now, in a lot of ways 6 has been easier than 5.  Mostly because the older kids are all a little older, and I don't have a 2 year old thrown in the mix as well.  ;)  All in all, I have so much to be grateful for EVEN when things seem really hard.  And that perspective is desperately needed on a day like today when the baby was up pretty much ALL night long... :)