Phoebe Goes to Church in a Sober Dress

My vision for this dress was a little French girl:  a charcoal grey dress with a bright white Peter Pan collar, worn with black tights and black patent shoes.  In reality, Phoebe looks like a sober little pilgrim, still a darn cute look for a toddler.

But I could also call this dress the Goldilocks dress because I had to try three times before I got it right.  First, when I followed the pattern, the enormous 80s puff sleeves were wearing Phoebe.  Then, I recut the sleeves with a sleeve from another pattern and they turned out to be too small for the arm scye of the dress, but I tucked them in there anyway because it was the night before Phoebe's dedication at church.

She wore the dress to her dedication and it was all bunchy across the shoulders, which no one noticed because Phoebe herself was charming.

We came home after the service with our extended families in tow and had brunch instead of Sunday school.  My husband came up with the idea, and I worked on the menu to make as much ahead as possible.

:::tartines composed of homemade French bread or flax-seed bread, with bacon, proscuitto or ham and yogurt cheese, brie, or local cheddar, or tuna cream cheese, plus onion jam and smoked tomato chutney
:::roasted potatoes, mushrooms, and onion
:::olives
:::fresh fruit tray
:::caramel pecan sticky buns
:::coffee
:::mimosas

Everything was so delicious and leisurely that several people begged to have brunch together every Sunday.

I had decided to salvage the adorable striped buttons off the dress and junk it, but really, Phoebe did look so cute in it, that I found the very last scrap of grey fabric and redid those sleeves a third time.  And finally, finally, I got them reasonably right (still a tad long across the shoulders and through the wrist, but at this point, Phoebe had started shrieking "no!" when the dress crossed her line of sight because I had tried it on her so many times).

I'm really grateful to have pictures to show some snippets of the good times we had.  Thanks to my sister for snapping some phone photos during the service itself; I hear my sister-in-law also got a short video of Phoebe saying "amen" to the congregation, too, and laughing and clapping at them when they started laughing and clapping at her. Oh, Phoebe!