I am wondering if any experienced adopters, parents or others could advise us on what to do, please?
Once ds is legally part of the family we have decided we will have a dedication for him at church, and a party.
We really want to do this as we did it with dd when she was 8 months old and we felt it was our preferred option instead of infant baptism, even though we attended a Church or England Church, which normally baptises infants (don;t worry the questions are not religious ones!).
Dedication is a service you can have in church where you welcome a child to the family and dedicate yourselves as parents to bring the child up in a Christian home. This is an alternative to having a child baptised into the Christian faith. So the child makes up their mind as an adult whether or not to be baptised, and maybe confirmed too. This is done in the Church of England and also happens more commonly in Baptist churches too.
We hope people will use this as a chance to celebrate ds’s arrival as many friends and family did not send us cards when ds came or buy gifts etc. We did get several cards (about 12) but we got many, many more when dd was born, I know it is not about amounts but I know some people would actually like to celebrate with us and mark the arrival of our new ds.
After the service we will go into the church hall for a celebration. Maybe we will have a short welcome speech, then a nice buffet lunch. We may have a children’s entertainer, maybe a big joint craft event for the kids to do a big picture collage together for ds to keep as a memento of the day. I will put dd in charge of stuff so she feels needed and integral to the day.
Questions to follow!