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On June 24 Precious was dedicated at our church. In case you’re not familiar with “baby dedication” it is kind of like infant baptism but without the water. It’s a chance for the baby’s parents to publicly commit to raising their child in the values and beliefs of our faith—Christianity—and for the church as a whole to commit to supporting the family. At our church, our pastor speaks a special, elaborate blessing over each baby. We follow the Biblical tradition of blessing—extending a hand toward the one being blessed (usually the right hand) or placing a hand on the head or chest. A blessing is similar to a prayer.

First, our pastor loves to hold each baby and show him or her off to the congregation. I warned Precious about this and asked her to be nice to pastor and not cry. She listened! A little scared but she didn’t cry.

My parents, Jason’s parents and my brother- and sister-in-law and niece were there. Our parents were up on the stage with us for the dedication.

Our dear friends were also having their son dedicated that day.

Before all of this, our pastor asked Jason and I to come up and share the story of how Precious joined our family and all the drama that happened with DCS, the court, custody and the private adoption. It’s quite an amazing, miraculous story and we were glad to share it. Jason is very comfortable on stage (he’s a professional musician so he’s in front of huge crowds all the time) so the plan was that he would do most of the talking. But somehow, halfway through the story I got the microphone. I think I actually did quite well—I didn’t feel very nervous when I was talking. My mom recorded the whole thing and I can’t bring myself to watch it—I’d rather just think I sounded confident and cohesive!

As we were wrapping up, pastor asked my parents to bring Precious up.

After church we went out for lunch with our family and then spent the afternoon in the pool. Here’s Precious with her cousin Eliza. It’s getting to be nearly impossible to get both of these girls in a picture together without one or both in a blur of motion. This one is the best I got.

I’m thrilled that we got a family photo to remember the day, thanks to my sister in law Ginger (above cutie’s mama). I meant to get a photo of all of us dressed up on Easter and we missed our chance due to afternoon naps. It may seem petty but Precious has been a part of our family for 9 months now and this is the first good picture I have of all three of us. Actually—it’s all four of us! Lucy managed to sneak into the shot and even looked at the camera. That was a happy surprise when I was looking at the photo later.

I haven’t posted an adoption update lately. We’re still waiting for our finalization hearing to be scheduled at the courthouse. For some reason, the clerk is very slow about getting back to our attorney who has been leaving voicemails daily. The chances of us getting on the July adoption docket are looking slim now; hopefully we’ll get in on the August one.