Pictures of a busy weekend.

More photographs courtesy of Grandad Walton:

Baptism photos

Here are a few photos from the baptism. We'll add more as we get them!

Violet and Ivy ready for their big day.

V+I with mother and Godmothers.

V+I with parents and Godparents.

Ivy asleep on Godfather Daffy!

A Big Day

Ivy Elisabeth Clare was Baptised on Sunday the fifteenth of February and Violet Grace Lucille had the remainder of her ceremonies.  It was a really lovely day.

Thank you to everyone for helping out with the liturgy and the celebrations.  Thanks especially to Father Hugh and Deacon Jim for the beautiful Mass, to all the musicians who worked very hard (especially considering the very late notice I gave them...), to Ailsa's brothers for ushering and sorting the chapel out, to Daffy, Marianne, John and Auntie 'mary for keeping their promises to be good Godparents (so far, so good), to Janet and Francis K. for Eucharistic Ministering (and for baking five billion amazing cakes), to all our guests (who brought another few trillian cakes), to Charlotte, Daffy and Marianne for cleaning until the place was crumbless and to our families who've been fantastic and without whom, we'd be seriously stuck.  Thanks for all your presents, cards, best wishes, hugs, kisses and prayers.  Violet and Ivy have been far too spoilt with everyone's love and affection, but they certainly deserve it.

PHOTOGRAPHS

If anyone has any photographs of the Baptism which they would be willing to share on this blog, please email them to one of us: almachius@gmail.com and ailsawalton@gmail.com  Thank you.

P.S. To those of you who noticed the trend of my girls to take it in turns to cry during the Baptism (but only when being held by their father), I'm pleased to point out that this is in fact a phenomenon of quantum mechanics (or so we've been told by Great Uncle Andrew) and is therefore nothing to do with my failure as a parent (or my beard, as one guest suggested).

Weights

Violet and Ivy were weighed this morning, Violet is now 6lb 10oz and Ivy is 9lb 1oz!

Where's Walton?

Five months of joy and nappies

As of about... now... Violet and, a minute later, Ivy are five months old! Well done daughters :-)

I can't believe how fast this time has gone by and yet I can't remember what life was like before.

ProLife rant.

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http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/ggraham/2009/01/27/flashpoint-a-womans-right-to-choose/

This article was brought to my attention today. It is an American article about abortion. Please read it. It's just one of a countless list of links I could give you to a discussion of the issue.

I realise that this blog is perhaps not an 'appropriate' platform to voice what may be called my political position on a certain issue, but there it is. It would, however, be far more inappropriate (and from my perspective, ethically wrong) of me not to show my true colours on this issue, because it is not just an issue, it is one of the deepest, most fundamentally troubling problems in our modern world and in our modern psyche.

It's not about religion by the way, that discussion is an hilarious, ingeniously malicious red-herring - this issue is far more important than which gods you worship or whatever (this discussion, as we know, is futile) - it's about freedom, and it's about life. And, unfortunately, it's about language. Words are [not] everything.

Words are so damn powerful (try not to think about an elephant) that even in these postmodern times we still cling to a sort of logocentric fetish, and this in itself is fine and probably inevitable - but when one particular order of words (an argument, for example) can allow a person to be killed because, of course, the definition of 'a person' is obscured, then we really have to go beyond those words and indeed beyond our conventions and just contemplate the silent reality. What we will find there may be, of course, many different things but when it comes to life, or more poignantly, the life of another (i.e., not our own life), then we must, we must sacrifice our language, our own individual interpretation of 'reality' and allow that life to have it's own: to be.

Surely, if freedom has any value, it is first and foremost the freedom to live. YES, we have choices, YES, we have difficult choices, YES we have genuine, reasons and explanations for solving genuine crises but at what point do our excuses (which are no doubt coherent and understandable) become restrictions on the freedom of another? Who has the greater freedom? And how can we help those who face these real crises? - what choice does our society give them?

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Anyway, of course I really, really don't want to upset anyone but nor do I want our society and our language to keep killing people. I know which I'd rather do. And I certainly don't condemn anyone. We are all victims of this problem whatever our proximity to the issue is, whatever we have done or not done. But we are all guilty too because this issue must be discussed and must be meditated upon and must be something we don't turn a blind eye to, even if we have a different understanding of the situation, we must at least acknowledge it. THIS IS AN ISSUE and WE MUST RESPOND.

Throughout history we have been guilty of ignoring the elephant in the room - the slave trade, the holocaust, climate change, trafficking are some recent examples which come to mind - and our time is no different.

What is the quickest, cheapest way of getting rid of an elephant? By changing its name (redefinition/obscurity) but an elephant by any other name is just as sweet... Enslaving/torturing/killing humans is wrong, we all know that. So if you want to enslave, torture or kill someone, you just call it something else - it's not simple, but it's remarkably achievable. Throughout history we have seen this over and over and over again; today is no different; our world is no less susceptable to making these mistakes and, to a large extent, no one is to blame; there is no malevolent 'them' or 'system', no motiveless Iago just doing it for kicks. We must move beyond this oppositional dialectic and simply look at 'normality', our lives, our culture, our language.

Most of us, most of the time are comfortable and complacent with the status quo (cliched but true) and so most of us don't even think to challenge the 'norm'. We challenge other 'injustices', but the status quo and our language have already defined these 'injustices': they are indeed part of the status quo: it is indeed the 'norm' to campaign for trade justice (it wasn't fifteen years ago), it is the 'norm' to promote recycling (it wasn't ten years ago), it is the 'norm' to side with the Pallestinians (it wasn't sixty years ago), it is the 'norm' to condemn racism and slavery (it certainly wasn't two hundred years ago in this country, and certainly isn't in many places today) and indeed it is the 'norm' to expect and promote education (another very modern phenomenon).

So yes, we do challenge injustices, but do we ever really challenge the norm? No, not most of us, not even the hippiest, most rebellious, down-with-the-kids funkiest of us. We take for granted what is already accepted as good/bad and we either ignore it or those of us who can, do something about it, but rarely do we challenge the presumed dichotomy. Does anyone? Yes. And many who do are remembered and venerated by society as pioneers of truth, justice, integrity and liberty (Siddhārtha Gautama, Jesus, Guru Nanak, Wilberforce, Marx, Fawcett, Pankhurst, Ghandi, Luther-King - just the obvious ones) but they were not fighting conventional injustices, they were fighting against the norm. You see where I'm going...

Please, I beg of you, whatever you think of this issue, whatever you think of my rant or the article I've linked to, please, please, please just think about it.

I may be wrong, I may be mistaken, it may in fact be true and justifiable that we have the right to terminate a foetus with down syndrome, autism or potential breast cancer and that this should be enshrined in law BUT, what if, on this occasion, I am not wrong? Please think about it.

Thank you so much for reading this. Peace.

We had a lovely January

V+I; a sleepy splash.


I+V; spotty babygrows




I+V; [not quite] ready for bed


V+I; two sleepy rabbits in the twinmobile


V; There's that funny bearded postman again!


Ivy, looking suspiciously like a Nick Park creation. Uncanny.


Lead the way, Ivy.


Violet having a good old chin wag with Auntie 'mary.