Lizzie's three-in-one Blessing Dress

Where do the weeks go?  Lizzie was blessed over three weeks ago and I finally took a few pictures of her in the dress.   They aren't what I wanted, but blogging must go on or it will never get done.

I'd hoped to get a family picture of us in front of the chapel (since I've never posted one of our meeting house) but that morning was pretty hectic and after church is always crazy.  This was the only picture we got that day.  We were able to do the blessing before my mom left.  We are so glad she was able to be here for this.  In our church, babies are formally given a name and a blessing after they are born as declaration of sorts before putting their names on the records of the church.  Members of the church are baptized when they are eight years old.  The blessing Ben gave Elizabeth was beautiful.

The beautiful dress that a very kind and talented friend generously made for us (thanks, Sally!).  I wanted Lizzie to have a special dress that represented her being born in Asia.  Notice the little mandarin collar and buttons.

   

Darling bracelets that Ben's sweet Grandma sent.  Lizzie got her middle name 'Helen' from Ben's Grandma Clark.  Lizzie is lucky share a name with such a wonderful woman!

Oh, we love this sweet face!  She is perfection.

Enough with the spiritual and on to the comical.  Now for the real story of the dress.  Like I mentioned, I wanted her to have a special dress.   I'd been to chinatown with a friend and found a few cute styles of dresses I liked.  Tailors are everywhere here, but finding one who would make a newborn dress was tricky.  My friend found a cute older lady who said she could do it.  We settled on a style she felt she could make.  I explained what I wanted and she confirmed that she understood it was for a brand new baby.  She even promised to be quick about it so I wouldn't have to go out of the house during my confinement period to pick the dress up.  Her shop is near Ben's work so he picked it up one evening on his way home.  I told him to text me a pic and tell me how it was.  He said it was lovely but kept indicating it may be a little big for the baby.  He got home with the dress, which was very nice and well-made...

...for a five-year old.

I'm sure Ben was trying to gently prepare me, but the word 'little' in Ben-ese apparently means 'enormous'.  In fact, just for fun we had Samara put it on and she was swimming in it.  Ben wisely and intentionally forgot to tell me until we had the new dress that the little tailor lady (let's call her 'madame Foo') told him, "I make dress to fit a newborn baby to age three."  Chego?! (that's Russian for 'did you smoke crack for breakfast?)  All too often that's how it's done here.  They like to do you favors by deciding for you what you really want.  Really, it makes it worse that she actually intended a newborn to wear it when she made it.  It's hard not to giggle when we see the dress.  We've had fun thinking of how it could have been used on a newborn, a swaddle blanket? sheet for the basinet?   Wait...

...I know...she's seen this illustration and read the poem, 

   My Three White Dresses.   She was doing us a favor by making us a three-in-one dress.  The back is elastic so you could easily just add some fabric to the bottom to make it a baptism dress and then alter it somehow to be part of a wedding dress.  Brilliant!!

It would have been one thing if the dress actually did fit a three-year old.  I sent it home to my niece who is six (NOT newborn to age three size).  I should have sewn a tag in it that says "made with love especially for the Western baby (that's mandarin for 6-yr old)".