Blessing Our Little Girl

On March 20, we were privileged to bless Tatum in sacrament meeting at church. It was a whirlwind of a day, full of family and friends, smiles and lots of baby snuggles.

I am so incredibly grateful for the wonderful father that Danny is to our children. He cares so deeply for them and his love shows every time I see him interact with them.

On Sunday morning, I woke up feeling giddy and excited. It might sound silly to those of you who don't understand how I grew up, but I was raised by parents who celebrated each new child in the family with a baby blessing. In the LDS church, it is the first time the new baby in a family is officially given a name and a blessing, and their name is recorded on the records of the church.

I took Tatum downstairs after feeding her. She cooed and gurgled plenty that morning. I definitely believe that she knew exactly what would be happening later that day. As I came around the corner of our stairs, I could see Danny seated at the dining room table, poured over his scriptures and a quickly filling page of thoughts and notes he had. I love that he reflected the morning of her blessing on what he might say. The blessing given is essentially a father's blessing for a child's life. He gave such a beautiful blessing for Joshua, and I knew that he was carefully pondering and intently listening for the promptings of the spirit that can only come with study and reflection in the scriptures. I love my husband. He has a quiet testimony, but it's times like these that I know without a doubt that he has a firm testimony in the guidance of the Spirit and the power of priesthood blessings.

The time of her blessing came quickly it felt like, and then suddenly we were trying to rush out the door to be at the church relatively early (saving seats can be tricky when you have tons of family local who plan to attend). Thankfully, even though Tatum doesn't exactly love the carseat or the car, she was quiet and relaxed on the car ride there.

As we walked in the door, Danny and I handed Joshua off to aunts and uncles (he's two and was very happy to go sit with them to play and sing songs), and pried Tatum's fingers off the carseat buckles--She hates the car seat and to all appearances is always trying to take off her straps. Then I gently dressed her in her blessing dress. She looked absolutely beautiful. Her dress has that miniature wedding dress feel to it. I felt like I was dressing her in a princess gown, which felt completely and utterly fitting because I know she is the daughter of a Heavenly King.

I handed her off to be snuggled by Grandma Debbie and fed her bottle of milk before the blessing. (She was wearing a big bib and a burpcloth cuz I was terribly paranoid about that dress getting spit up or poop on it, let's be real here). She was so calm and alert. I love this age of newborns--when they are recognizing people and voices.

It's so special to me that she turns her head to look at her Daddy whenever he talks. I can imagine that she stared up intently at him, sucking her pacifier for all she was worth, while he was giving her the blessing.

Sacrament meeting started and the time for her blessing was announced right after the opening hymn, prayer, and announcements for the ward.

I carefully handed my pretty little princess off to her loving Daddy and watched as an army of the priesthood holders in her life converged in a circle around her, each holding a hand underneath her little body to help hold her up and to lay their hands on her during the blessing. It was such an incredible moment to look up and see them in a circle around her: her father, her three grandfathers, and her uncles--my brother and brothers in law.



It's so hard to accurately describe how I was feeling as Danny blessed our little girl. Something about having a daughter makes it feel that much more special to me because I was once blessed in a similar sacrament meeting by my dad and his friends and brothers.

Danny's blessing was precious and is precious to me, so I won't be sharing specifics, but I know he was prompted by the Spirit to say the things he said in his blessing for our first daughter. I'll share the thoughts he wrote down with her when she is older. She is so well loved by her whole family and we are so thrilled she joined our family nearly 2 months ago.

We were so fortunate to spend the day with family and friends afterwards, take some fun pictures and celebrate this day with them! She is so loved!