Baptism/Behaviour myth: busted

One day, while watching me try and wrangle my squalling son, my father-in-law voiced the opinion that the reason Bubba was so bad is because he had not been baptized yet. Bubba had since proven that to be blatantly false. I am amazed that his personality is shining through so soon, and scared that he is such a diva. Last night I didn't give him his dinner in what he considered to be a timely manner, so he started screaming and waving his arms around, snatching at whatever he could get his hands on - it was high drama in the high chair. He threw his sippy cup across the kitchen, he knocked his bowl of food off the tray. He screamed and squealed and was just generally unpleasant. I was astonished - hell hath no fury like my son when I don't shovel rice cereal into his mouth fast enough. He wasn't starving - he had a bottle probably an hour or so before he ate, and he wasn't tired - he had just awakened from a nice nap right before he had that bottle, so I don't know what his problem was. Yikes.

The baptism went off without a hitch. The priest that was supposed to perform the baptism wasn't at mass, which really scared me because I have had some less-than-stellar experiences with him in the past, so all I could picture was him no-showing and...well, that would have been bad. He eventually showed, about ten minutes late but there nonetheless, and we got the show on the road. Whew. Bubba was somewhat well-behaved, the deed was done, and everyone is happy now. My mother-in-law is ecstatic because she can take him to Alabama to go shopping and eat dinner (she is of the old school that thinks you should not take the baby out before it is baptized - not that it stopped her from taking him all over town, so apparently she revised her views to allow in-town escapades, but anything crossing state lines puts his soul in jeopardy).

The party afterwards was threatened by a nasty squall that moved through - terrible wind, rain, lightning and thunder for a good forty-five minutes. It eventually cleared up, though, and everyone feasted on the pig (which, while not necessarily pleasant to behold, was not full-on nasty like I thought it would be) and other yummy treats. Clean up was exhausting, and we were not done until almost 6:30. Tired, dirty, wet and hot. But over! Hooray! My son is a clean slate. For now.