The Baptism

And Father Golding and 'la Abue' like to look at Sofia too!

Sofia wore the same dress her 'Abue' wore more than 65 year ago for her Baptism. We love this family traditions. As you can see, Sofia likes Father Golding very much.

Here we are all together!

Sofia's Godparents could not be present due to the distance, but her 'Abue' and her 'Tio Juanjo' were their representatives.




An intimate ceremony took place at 3:00pm on May 26th. to welcome Sofia into the Catholic Church. Father Golding celebrated the Baptism beautifully.

Baptism

Sofia will be baptized in this churh on Friday May 26th 2006. She will be wearing the same dress that her grandmother from her mother's side wore more than 65 years ago. Oh yes, 'La Abue' (as she calls her grandmother in Spanish) likes keeping things for a long time. Sofia is also using everyday the same blankets that her mother used when she was a baby, yes once again La Abue has kept them.

La Siesta

Who doesn't enjoy a peaceful nap or a long night sleep? Sofia definetly enjoys them. She actually sleeps quite well for being only 5 weeks old. She falls asleep after her last feed of the day between 10:00pm and 11:00pm and then wakes up around 4:30am or 5:30am eats for about and hour and is out again until about 9:00am. Her parents love this!!

British Citizenship?

We are Canadians, and we usually hail from Western Canada. Being active and energetic folks, however, our adventures often take us to far and exotic places. Well, ok, maybe England isn't that "exotic," but it is where we are living now, and is clearly quite far away from our home.



Many have asked or made comments about the citizenship of Sofia Marie. Canadians and Americans might assume that, as in North America, being born on British soil will impart British citizenship to our little one. Perhaps not such an unreasonable assumption, as many Britons initially believe the same thing. However, this turns out not to be the case: British citizenship, as citizenship in many other Western European countries, is earned only by descent. Therefore, Sofia will need to be content with "only" the dual citizenship inherited directly from her two parents ... for now. We do hope, however, that language abilities in children are earned more easily than citizenship is granted, and so hope that Sofia will be trilingual by the time she starts school. That, however, is another story which I won't begin right now.

In the beginning

Everyone (and pretty much everything) has to start somewhere. This is our beginning, in more ways than one. We thought we would start a blog to coincide with the the arrival of a new life in our family. (Or at least, the Chris part of "we" thought that.) Although we both feel that our beginning as a family was well over a year ago, the birth of a child is definitely the beginning of something new.

And, so we introduce to you Sofia; there is no doubt that she will be at the centre of many of our adventures over the next few months and years! After only a couple of weeks, she is already showing signs of having the energy of her parents. And even though we are told that babies don't really smile until 6 weeks of age, she does seem to enjoy our walks around town.