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tradition (tra`di•cn)
n. The body of customs, thought, practices, etc., belonging to a particular
family, and handed down from generation to generation, especially by word of mouth, over a
relatively long period.
Bernadine Sevy
We
have many wonderful traditions that surround a new baby coming to our
home. As we prepare for our 8th child and 5th son,
Joshua to come home, any day now, we have compiled some of these enjoyable
traditions to share with you.
A quilt for Joshua
Part of getting ready for a baby in our home is making each child his
or her own crib size quilt. In fact I'm even a little paranoid about it,
Joshua's quilt is all pieced but not quilted yet, so watch he'll come 2
weeks late. A lot of consideration goes into each quilt and for Joshua's I
got the children very involved. I knew that I wanted to do a blue and
white quilt and that I wanted to speed piece the triangles and so I
started to go through my pattern books to find a design. I found a number
of patterns that I liked and would work and sketched them out onto grid
paper, I colored them the way that the quilt would look and had the
children vote on the designs. The result was quite sweet. They kids all
knew the story of Joshua marching around the city Jerico and how the walls
had come tumbling down, so the design that they picked was one called
"Broken Windows." A beautiful quilt, all 1000 pieces of it. They
cheered me on as I stitched and are all excited to have a hand at quilting
now, so that they can tell Joshua that they had a hand in it, literally!
Coming home from the hospital
I have always packed the same outfit in my hospital bag for the new
baby to wear home. There is something comforting to me about it,
remembering each tiny newborn in the same thing. The children love seeing
the tiny baby outfit again and imagining how they looked in the same
outfit, astounded that they ever "fit into that!" Depending on
the situation, Jim has always dressed the new addition for his trip home.
Luckily our babies have weighed between 5 lbs and 7 lbs and so the outfit
has always fit, somewhat loosely for a couple but it has never been too
small.
The second important outfit
My mother began this tradition when we were christened and it made so
much sense to me that I did it with my babies too. Each child is blessed,
which is what we call it in our religion, in their own outfit, so that
they will have it for their eldest child. I have also made sure that they
had their own blanket and booties. My eldest was blessed in my dress and
my second child used my christening blanket on his blessing day. Johanna
my eldest can use my dress on for her eldest child, if she chooses to, and
David can hand down the shawl. I love making or shopping for the perfect
outfit and we have had a wonderful time in our family with this. I made my
second child's outfit, my mother crocheted the third child's dress, my
mother-in-law made the third daughter's dress and each has in someway
contributed to all 7 outfits, blankets, shawls and booties. It makes a
special day even more sacred and I believe that those feelings will still
be felt when they are used again for my grandchildren's sacred blessing
days.
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