Jacob's Blessing

* Begun 7/30/09*

We blessed our little Jacob on July 12th, when he was right around 2 1/2 months old. It was a wonderful day! We were happy that so many of our family members were able to make it for our special day. Both my parents and Ryan's came, and almost all of our brothers and sisters and their spouses except for a few (we missed you Zane, Amber, Melissa and Seth!). Jacob was blessed the day after Thomas' 3rd birthday party, which was a lot to pack into one weekend, but Sunday was still a great day of getting to spend time with our families celebrating an important day for our sweet baby Jacob.

We have 9 am church and it has been a real challenge for us to get to church on time since Jacob was born. I was so nervous we would accidentally sleep in and miss getting to bless Jacob altogether! Thankfully that didn't happen, even though I was up quite late cleaning up after the birthday festivities the night before. I think I set 2 or 3 different alarms to make sure I got up as early as I needed to! I really wanted the morning to start out on a peaceful note and I tried very hard to make it so that we weren't too rushed Sunday morning. Thankfully the morning worked out so that the house was quiet for awhile (only possible 'cause Tommy slept in!) and Ryan was able to get some time to himself, to reflect and prepare and hold his little infant son while he thought about the blessing he would be giving. He did this with Thomas on the morning of his blessing day as well, and I remember thinking how sweet and special it was. And though we were in a tad of a rush right before getting out the door, we made it to church early! A miracle!!!

Ryan gave Jacob a wonderful blessing. Even though he has told me he's been nervous when giving our babies blessings, he sounds so calm to me, like it comes very easy to him. I won't write the blessing here, but I'm thankful to have the words recorded so we can be able to read it to Jacob someday. Jacob was lucky to have so many priesthood holders from our family helping to bless him--there was Ryan, his dad, his brothers Nathan and Eric, our brother-in-law Jon, my Dad, and my brothers Josh and Travis. And oh yeah...my 13-year-old brother Jared was able to participate in his own way too. He was too young to actually help bless Jacob, but he asked to hold the microphone for Ryan, and I was really glad he got to be a part of it all. =) I was also really grateful that my mom let Thomas sit by her during the blessing, so I didn't have to wrangle him and could really concentrate and listen to the blessing. Jacob was great during the blessing and didn't cry or fuss at all.

After sacrament we took a few pictures outside and then everyone headed over to our house for an early lunch. Since I'd just thrown Tommy's party the night before, I made it easy on myself for Sunday and just bought some sandwich platters and cookies from Costco, and we also had lots of chips and pop left over from Tommy's party. It was an enjoyable afternoon spent eating and talking with everyone, and it was extremely nice for me to have all the stressful parts of the weekend past me!

Though I was worried about the pressure of having both events on the same weekend, I was really glad that our families were able to come and be a part of our special days for both Thomas and Jacob. Ryan and I are so lucky to have not only our own little family with our two sweet boys, but our wonderful parents and siblings and their spouses too. We can honestly say they are our favorite people to spend time with, hands down!

Funny note: I was so worried that Jacob would go #2 and have a blow-out in his white blessing outfit during the short amount of time between when I put him in it (right before we left the house) and less than an hour later when he was blessed. I just sensed somehow that this was going to happen. Well, only moments before it was time for the blessing, Ryan was holding Jacob, and he turns to me and tells me that he felt Jacob just take a great big poo! Jacob was kind of wrapped in a blanket, so I peeked at his outfit, and sure enough, he had leaked. I had brought a second (though not as special) outfit just in case, but it was too close to the blessing to have time to change him, and it thankfully wasn't too big of a leak...not technically a blow-out like I had feared. So for the blessing Ryan just made sure he was semi-wrapped in the blanket so his poo-stain wasn't visible, and I took Jacob out to change him right after the blessing. I just knew it was gonna happen! (Though I ended up leaving him in the outfit until we got home, so he would have it on in our photos after church. The leak really wasn't too bad and I was sort of able to clean it up.)


Another thing was, in all of my work to make the morning go smoothly before we left for church that day, the one thing I didn't manage to do was find time to get a picture of Jacob in his blessing outfit. Then, of course, he soiled it at church, and I took it off the moment we got home. So, when I finally got around to it about a week and a half later, I put Jacob in his (washed) blessing outfit again and took some photos. Better late than never, right? Jacob's blessing outfit was the same one Thomas was blessed in, and they were also both blessed with the same blanket, which was made by my Grandma Kotter. Though the blessing outfit is really simple and not as fancy as some of those little white tuxes or suits, I really love it. I lucked out that it even fit Jacob (which it barely did), because Thomas was blessed at a little bit younger age than Jacob, and the size of the outfit was Newborn. I think it would be fun to have all our sons blessed in the same outfit and then frame it for a keepsake someday!