The invasion has come and gone. Leather Pants Grrrl arrived 2 weeks ago for an extended visit, then last Thursday Matilda, Dog-Faced Boy, King of the Hill People, and my mother showed up. The next day, the MIL, FIL, R and E arrived. And on Saturday, we banished Satan.

That is, we tried to.

The long visit with Leather Pants Grrl was lovely, if scary. Scary in that two avowed Urban Tough Grrrrls were pretty much brought to our cooing, simpering knees by a squirmy baby. Honestly, he's so young, that LPG's visit translates to a little under 20% of his life, so she got to witness him hitting milestones like really kicking in the cooing and babbling, grabbing with purpose for objects, and plotting world domination. He is also smiling and giggling now when happy and in response to people, and so LPG bestowed him with the nickname 'Flirty McFlirtson', as in, "Flirty McFlirtson turns on the Golden Retriever Puppy defense, and my urban grrrl street cred is gone." At this point, we figure our creds are not only gone, they have fled the country and are ensconced in Rio awaiting next year's Carnival. Sean's best use of flirting? My college pal Sanj was driving back to MA from points west, and stopped by for dinner. She had been listening to books on tape 2 Fridays ago, and had not heard the Supreme Court decision re: Texas sodomy law. As we wrangled over it- and Scalia's patently offensive dissent- after dinner, LPG declared, "Assfucking for everyone!" Sean's response was to, for the first time, squeal and clap his hands. I know what I'm getting him for his 18th birthday.

The fourth itself was filled with food and inebreation, and we all awoke a little muzzy headed on the 5th. The naming was set for 11 am, and thanks to 96 degree heat and a 30 foot tree threatening to come down at any second, we eschewed doing it in the garden and partook of the earthly pleasures of air conditioning. R wrote a positively gorgeous service, and she and I had a little moment before, as she stood there arrayed in her finery, and Sean wrapped in his tallit (a 'peace tallit', for those of you who care). It was one of those 'can you believe?' moments, where one's brain snaps back 10 years to blearily dragging each other's assess to class, and killing cheap chianti, and thinking 'who knew this is where we'd end up?'. I have never seen R more alive, more purely herself, more exquisitely rooted and simultaneously freed, as when she engages with the world of faith. Man, it rocked, and the baby, enveloped in love, community, and nice cool air slept through it all.

Fast forward several hours to the baptism. He slept in the back of the church as we waited for the 4pm mass to end. He placidly killed a bottle while we waited for the priest to get ready. He didn't twitch- though I did- as the priest ran through the order of service and seemed to have forgotten the fact that the Mother was not participating overmuch in this. I duly handed the baby off to Matilda, the godmother, in a blatant attempt to distance myself from the proceedings. Things got hairy when the priest began to talk about the light of god and sunlight broke through the stained glass and hit the baby full on in the face; alas, the windows are blue, and so it really looked like the aliens were coming to take the assemblage before he could be cleansed.

And then the priest began incanting about banishing satan, and the baby began to shriek in a manner so, well, unholy that if I didn't know better I'd said Matilda was giving him such a pinch. On second thought, maybe she was, to get him to screech at just that moment so LPG, Dog Faced, King, R&E, the Lad and I would all have to refrain from laughing hysterically as the child obviously objected to having Satan removed from him (Moooom! I was USING that Dark Lord!). He was shrieking so loudly I could not hear the priest by the end, and so for all I know, Satan was removed from the majority of the baby but has maintained a hold on his booty of mass destruction. And then we all had to trot up front, and the child continued to object most strenuously to the water, the chrism (which smells like the insides of 8 oily McD's apple pies mixed with frankincense- in other words, like total and complete ass, and we've had to wash his head multiple times to get it out, to no avail), and the general hoohah. And then came the part where we had to avow our renunciation of things.

And the priest included me.

Someone got a very very fabulous shot of me giving the camera-totin folks a death look as everyone else (parenty and godparenty, that is) chimed 'I do' to the renunciation of Satan, avowing and affirming their belief in Christ, The Lord Father, and the Holy Spirit while I remained strangely silent. Oddly, the church floor did not open to reveal a smoking crater and swallow me whole. But in a 'top this!' moment, the Lad and I were unaware that there were blessings to be made over, well, ME, and him, and furthermore that everyone watching but not participating was supposed to siddle over and lay a hand on me (that is what the priest said, which meant as I was fuming with Baby Jesus Mandated Personal Space Invasion, I had Bon Jovi running through my head, and that, my friends, really adds insult to injury). Hilariously, my friends and family know me well, and there was a long pause as they all looked at me, and to a person their facial expressions read, 'Will she kill me?'.

At the end of it all, we discovered that we still had the white hand-towel the priest had handed to Matilda to sop off the holy water. So, we, uh, kept it. It's in the baby's room jammed into the organizer, and I'm really not sure what to do with it. It doesn't seem right to just stick it in the powder room, and is it ok to wash it? Will that mean my washing machine will be blessed? Or will God smote my beautiful laundry room, because I'm just not risking that.