Today was Peter’s blessing. For those of you who are not members of my church, this is a special blessing generally given by the baby’s father. It is a big day for members of our faith. It is a unique opportunity for a worthy priesthood holder to bless his child as he is guided by the spirit. It was my opportunity today to bless Peter in church and many of our friends and family were there to witness the blessing and celebrate the occasion.

Since Peter is our first born, this was my first time at blessing a baby and I was as nervous as I have ever been. I believe in revelation. God loves us and I believe that if we are listening and are humble, God will speak to us and give us answers to our prayers and also the words to say when we need them. I knew that if this blessing was to be more than just words that it would need to be not just my words, but the words God would have me say. So I prayed fervently that God would give me the words to say today.

When it came time to bless him I took him in my arms and I felt distinctly that I was not alone. God answered my prayers and gave me the words to say as I blessed our little boy. It was a beautiful blessing and I know it will be fulfilled.

I served a mission for my church where for two years I went about trying to do good and share the gospel with everyone I could find. I’ve seen miracles and felt many times that I was standing on holy ground. God was close today and that is why it was not just a blessing for Peter, it was also a blessing for us as we were reassured of God’s love and swelled in gratitude that our little family can be together forever.

On monday my parents took Mary and I to take some family pictures. It was a great opportunity to make some memories especially because this would be the first time to get some professional prints of Peter. We went to Sharpe photography. It’s located along University Avenue and I was very pleased with their work. I would recommend them anytime. Here is a link to the gallery for the shots we got.

Graham Family Photos 2009

So we are traveling through uncharted territory. Peter was born on December 23rd at 11:57 pm. It was an incredible experience to watch my first child be born and to hold him for the first time. It is truly a miracle that this whole process works out the way it does. I look at his hands and his feet and I am amazed at how perfect he is. He breathes and cries and looks around and does everything a baby does and this all happened on its own. Birth, one of the most common things in the world, is still to me the most remarkable thing that occurs in this world. New life. I like to look at him lay peacefully wrapped up in blankets and think about all the things that he will be able to do in his life.

This great moment didn’t come without a lot of work. My love and respect for Mary increased a hundred fold that day as I stayed with her through the whole ordeal. She is an incredible woman and was able to give birth to a huge baby. Peter was 9 lbs. 7 oz. and was 20 inches long! In addition to Peter being so big, the labor was a little more complicated than normal. Peter wasn’t doing so well with the contractions to begin with. His heart rate would decelerate with each one which caused the doctor to worry. He couldn’t give Mary all the medicine she needed to move the labor along quickly because it intensified the contractions which Peter already didn’t like. So we were stuck between a rock and a hard place for most of the day. We checked into the hospital at 6:30 am and Mary wasn’t able to start pushing until 10:30 pm. But thanks to a lot of prayers from our friends and family and a priesthood blessing with the help of my brother-in-law Dave, everything worked out just fine and Peter was born without the need of a C-Section.

In our opinion, Peter is the cutest little boy ever born. But check out the pictures and see for yourself. We’re sure you’ll agree.

Picture Gallery:

• Peter’s Birth

These are a few of the things we did to get ready for the baby to come.

So this is it. This is our last day of not being parents. Tomorrow I’ll officially be a dad. This feel crazy to write but it’s true. Mary is going to the hospital tomorrow to be induced and we’ll be holding our little boy before the end of the day with any luck. We decided to spend today together in final preparation for our up and coming lifelong journey. We made sure we slept in good and late and caught a matinee of Avatar (which was totally amazing by the way). Afterward we went and grabbed some In-n-Out for dinner and now we are retired at home thinking about a lot of things, one of which is what to call this new baby.

building a stroller 101

To this point we have always felt like we had plenty of time to figure out what his name should be. I feel like I did when I was just coming home from my mission and still wondering, to my surprise, why after 2 years I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. We seem to always place so much faith and trust in time. Time will tell all and time will heal wounds right? Well time hasn’t decided a name for us and time hasn’t made me feel any more prepared to be a dad. Time, if anything, amplifies our own uncertainty and exposes our fears. But I tend to think that time is a stern school master. It makes us face our problems one way or another and forces us to change and adapt. I’m confident that we will find a perfect name for the little bambino once we see him for the first time tomorrow.

Everything is in place and ready to go. The car seat is snugly installed in the jeep along with the stroller. The crib is all built and nestled next to our bed along with the changing table we received from my parents. Our friends and family have given us tons of great clothes and things. We have the bouncer, the swing, and even a rocking chair. We bought diapers and wipes to last us, as it seems, through the millennium. I’m told that they go faster than I think (dag). We’ve cleaned the house and scrubbed the floor. We’ve packed our hospital bag and charged the cameras and called the hospital and told them we’re coming. Now all there is to do is wait  . . . and blog.

Along with all the physical preparations that we’ve made, we have also been thinking quite a bit about what to do with the baby when he comes. Questions like: what will we team him?, what kinds of things will he like?, what should we avoid doing? have all been running through our minds. It comes with the season I suppose but we have been talking a lot about what we will do for Christmas traditions. It becomes more and more obvious that Christmas is a transforming holiday. Each year it seems that the influence of commercialism is strengthening and the focus on the Savior is weakening. We recently watched the Fiddler on the Roof for family night a few weeks ago. The main character, Tevia who is a Russian Jew, struggles throughout the movie to come to terms with the social changes that were happening in his little village of Anatevka. Tevia explains in the beginning of the movie that life is a hostile environment. The winds of change blow from all directions and it feels as if we are all like a fiddler on the roof on the verge of falling off. Tevia answers the great question of how we should deal with the situation with one word, TRADITION! He explains that his people have traditions for everything from how to make cheese and bread, to how and when people go to school and work, and even whom they marry.

During this holiday season there is a huge focus on family traditions and how important they are to maintain. The people of Anatevka felt the same way about their traditions. Their traditions provided a framework on which to stand on so that they weren’t blown around by all the external forces of life that come upon them. It offers comfort and solidarity in a changing world. The problems Tevia encountered though I think are the same kind of problems that we encounter today. Tevia was faced with a situation where his eldest daughter wanted to marry her lifelong freind, the town tailor. He had no money or prospects of becoming wealthy. He didn’t have education or any of the things that Tevia and his wife would have wanted for their daughter, but they loved each other. They asked for his blessing for their marriage even after a husband had been arranged for her. Tevia was faced with the decision of whether or not to ignore the tradition of arranged marriage in order to stand firmly on the scaffolding of tradition that had served them so well for so long, or to do what felt intuitively right — allow his daughter to marry for love. Tevia gave in this time and all for the better.

When we think of traditions its important to think about why they exist. Merely keeping a tradition because of tradition’s sake can be dangerous to individuals, families, and societies. In the New Testament, Christ denounced those of the ruling class of the Jews who built a “hedge about the law”. This hedge was made up of the many traditions that the people had invented in order to keep themselves from breaking the law of moses. The commandment that the people should keep the Sabbath day holy turned into a tradition that dictated how many steps a person should limit themselves to on the holy day among other stipulations. These traditions, however well intentioned by their creators, effectually blinded the people to the true spirit of the law. They were designed to keep people from sin, but they also kept people from true worship and right living. In this sense the good things kept the people from the best things. If this happens, good things can really become bad things.

In a similar way, I have been thinking about the Christmas traditions that we all have and wonder if we allow our traditions to become more than just a regular way to celebrate and become instead the focus of our observance. Santa Clause, stockings, reindeer, sleigh bells, tinsel, trees, candy canes, bows, ribbons, fancy paper and cards, boxes, spice cake, cookies and milk — all traditions. This list doesn’t include the presents that need to take a category all of their own for traditions. It almost seems like Best Buy, Amazon, and Ebay have become the new symbols of Christmas instead of the manger, the stable, the Mother and the Babe. Do we let our traditions obfuscate what we are really doing on December 25th? This question is quite cliche and so I will take the analysis one step farther. When asked what is the true spirit of Christmas, you will hear an array of nouns such as love, peace, joy, giving, togetherness. All of these things are good and great, but I’m going to stir the pot a little and submit that these are not the spirit of Christmas because the spirit of Christmas is Christ. Now, Christ is all those things I just listed. But He is also so much more. The reason why we have this holiday, this holy day, is to celebrate His birth. Why? Because through Him we are ransomed from a certain death. Do our traditions point us to that realization? Are we honestly caused to think of that glorious event when we hang the stockings with care and set out the cookies and milk and wait for old Saint Nick while visions of sugar plums dance through our heads? Do our cherished traditions bring us closer to Bethlehem or do they take us far far away from Judea’s plains?

Anyway, long story short, I’ve become extra aware of the responsibility I have to teach our new baby and to make sure that he learns truth and wisdom. It’s a tall order because I’m lacking in both of those departments. Tevia learned that traditions can indeed keep us stable through hard times and can help us find answers to difficulties that arise. He also learned that principles supersede traditions and it is our responsibility to make the right choices. I hope that we are able to teach correct principles and to allow our family to enjoy traditions without becoming blind to the lessons that we should be learning.

post note: I wrote this on 12/22/09 and I didn’t get time enough to publish it. so it’s being published today 12/24/09 (a day after the birth).

Baby's first diapers and wipes

Mary and I made a huge step yesterday. We bought our first diapers and baby wipes from Costco. It was a little weird standing in line with a gigantic box of diapers and wipes, but it also felt strangely comfortable and normal. I think that being a Dad is finally starting to settle in and make itself at home in my mind.

Every day adds a little more suspense and every little thing gets me more excited about the day when he will finally come. We washed, folded, and organized all the clothes we received from our friends at Mary’s baby shower. We got a great new changing table/dresser from my parents along with a number of other items passed down from my little siblings. We got our stroller and spent some time putting it together.