Mara's Baptism

We are happy to let you know that Mara is now baptized as a Romanian Orthodox Christian with the given name Mara Ileana!

Mara Ileana Tener, freshly baptized as a Romanian Orthodox Christian

As per Romanian tradition, we baptize babies at anywhere between 2 weeks and 6 months. We decided that three months was a good time.

So far, the only instances when something out of Mara's, or my control got her upset were her vaccines. Those painful experiences happened right in my arms or Greg's, thus we could provide comfort immediately. This would be different. No pain, but possible fear of strangers and strange places, plus getting startled by some unusual things happening to her. And no mommy and daddy to give her that safety rope.

First off, to better explain what would happen on that special day, we first have to explain Mara's bath time personality a little bit so that you can understand her better.

Mara's Bath Time

Mara is very intrigued by bath time: she first closes her fists tight as she enters the warm water; she makes bright eyes and watches our faces, probably to check that this warmth is intended and safe, then relaxes and starts wiggling in the water. She doesn't make a peep while she is in there, and we end up taking her out when her skin is starting to look prune-ish, but she would stay longer for sure.

There is only one very, very minor trait that I figured would affect the baptism ceremony a lot: as soon as you take Mara out of the water she will make you understand how she really wanted to stay there all warm and nice!
She means it, and tells it to you a whole lot by crying for anywhere from 5 up to 15 minutes afterward, even though we try to keep her warm and soothe her by singing and playing and nursing.

Here is what it takes to get her soothed again after a bath:

• two loving parents (yay, that's easy!)
• our cozy house's very comforting territories that she sees every day and night
• extra-warmed bathroom and bedroom air with a space heater
• fluffy towel with hoodie, although we haven't figured our how to actually keep her in it, because she has disliked and fought any kind of swaddling from week one
• large mirrors where she could see herself and us holding her, thus get distracted for a little bit
• singing Baby Beluga the entire time, which is an awesome song by Raffi
• spending very little time lying down - we end up dressing her upright while she is being held by one of us
• nursing through tears, while mommy and daddy are singing and smiling to appease her.

Now, let's put this in the context of Mara spending most of the time in the house with her Mommy, having one or two brief visits per week, and seeing Daddy on mornings for a half hour, evenings for two, and in daytime in the weekends, you can imagine what might happen if you decide to give the baby to newly-met godparents to hold, and an imposing-looking priest to give her a very 'official' bath, with none of the aforementioned soothing factors.

Thus, Mommy steeled herself for weeks before this endeavor and was still anxious the day-of.

Preparation

We had most of the prep done by the eve of the big day. To make sure that we'd have something fitting her, because we had been burned before on the clothes size, we ordered three dresses and received another one just-in-case from our friends Dorina and Radu (thank you for all the 6-month baby clothes! Mara is loving them!!).

I had asked friends and family about what is customary to do and got a lot of really awesome advice for which we're very thankful. We decided to do the basics:

• A very beautiful beeswax candle that the godparents brought from North Carolina.
• A set of pretty girly clothes for going to church (thank you, Dorina!).
• A pure white dress for coming out of church, for which we had several choices to make sure something fits that day; we accessorized with the cutest little white socks and a gorgeous white christening bib.
• A simple white towel to receive the baby after the christening; the more customary object is an unfinished white cloth that is called "crișmă" in Romanian, which should be "untouched by the hand of man" which is in itself flawed because someone must have woven it. Because this part seems to be more of a people's tradition rather than the church, but mostly because mommy could not manage to get to a fabrics store to look for one, we decided to go with the simple white towel inherited from Greg's baptism (thank you, Alpa!).
• A pretty little fabric-woven cross to put in the baptism water which was gifted to us by our most kind parish priestess Madalina. You can see it on Mara in the "hero" shot at the beginning of the post, baby blue to match her baby blue eyes!
• Something to treat the people attending, as in the Romanian tradition it is said that the more the guests enjoy the treats, the more happiness should be bestowed upon Mara.

The Night Before Baptism

On the baptism eve we had our dress fitting session!

Greg's parents had finally arrived after several hours delay in LAX (guessing either some movie star needed to get her Chihuahua's hair extensions dyed, or the clouds were gathering over the Eye of Mordor over some producer's mansion).

Cutest little puff of whiteness!

The smiles and happiness started as soon as they walked through the door and continued all through the evening's fitting session as well. We lined up all the dresses with potential matching onesies and hats, and picked the smallest one first.

Mara's favorite baby is ... [drumroll] ... herself!!!

She loves seeing herself being held in front of any reflective surface. It soothes fussies, it breaks out smiles, it gets her in the mood for dancing. That night we added one more to the list: it makes Mara happy with new and potentially cumbersome clothes!

That's right, Mara's evening clothes-changing attitude turned from her usual
"I'll let you do this to me for exactly twenty seconds, I think it might do me good; but any more than that and I shall cry loudly, as per protocol." (ref. to Ze Frank's "Sad Cat Diaries") to: "Look at me, I'm the cutest little puff of whiteness!"

We didn't even dare try any of the other larger outfits. She was so happy we spent more than 20min in it just admiring the cuties, with and without the jeweled layer, which also lead to a sizable amount of drool slowly creeping down the entire front of the dress before we realized it was happening. Note to mommy while hand washing the dress later that night: it's fine to use a non-matching bib, it's a vital accessory if you need the dress clean and proper the following morning!

The Special Day

Mara's soon-to-be godparents landed (literally) that morning and got to the house for the 1.5h of baby training. How she prefers to be held front-facing most of the time, swayed not rocked, tricks we use to changing her when she's fussy and the like. Raluca and Mara were soon sharing the happiest cuddles!
In the short time we had Tammy and Raluca also managed to run to get some pretty flowers
for the candle and christening vessel.

When we got to church we were happy to see our wedding godparents joining us, coming straight from work as this was a Friday, and our sweet (pun intended!) cake/cupcakes lady bringing vegan deliciousness straight to the church door, in respect of the Christmas Romanian Orthodox fasting that had begun already.

The service started with a content baby even though she had only had a 1/4th of her usual 1-hour nap in the car seat on the way there, and a brief and interrupted feeding on the strange new premises that had too many interesting things and people.

Father Daniel, who was also to become honorific Godfather to Mara, joined the service with Fathers Constantin and Florin from our parish and made an exquisitely beautiful bilingual service, while Raluca was holding sweet little Mara.

The full service was about 1h15min, and by the end of it Mara was baptized in the Holy Water and changed into the pure white clothes as a new Christian baby!

As you may have guessed from the beginning of this post, we had a progression of different Maras:

Quiet, examining new surroundings Mara

Tired, but still happy being held Mara

Are you really about to change me NOW when I am so SLEEPY?! Mara

Hrm, a warm bathy, I guess I can do that Mara

Warm bathy is goooone!!! Mara

I still can't believe you took me out of the bathy Mara

I'm a white poof ball again! Mara

        Communion? I only take breastmilk Mara

Oooooh I'm a white poof ball in Daddy's Arms and   I like Alpa, I'll grant her a smile Mara

A present for me? I'll take it! Mara

The ending of the service was marked by group photos, delicious vegan cupcakes made with coconut butter, and a white puff of sleeping baby in mommy's arms.

After another nappy on the way home, and back to our usual playground, Mara recovered her little bag of smiles and happies and started spreading them around again, and took extra long naps for the rest of the day.

And of course, that evening, there was cake!

Our cake lady got the text message with the text for the cake without the last two characters :-) Yet she did such a nice job on the white flowers, and the chocolate-coconut cake was truly delicious enough to make you forget that it was strictly vegan, thus we loved it all!