Baby Shower for Our Boy!

If there's one thing that remains consistent in my life, it's a fascination with islands, the sea, ships, and perhaps some occasional piracy.

Because of this, a light "nautical" theme seemed like the obvious choice for my baby shower. Because I'm the usual party planner in the family, I was told, "How about you tell us exactly what you would do if you were planning a baby shower for someone else, and then we'll do it." So, yes, I helped plan and coordinate my baby shower. You can't simply take away all the fun of party planning simply because I'm the one with the baby on the way!

We kept decor minimal, because we held the party at a friend's house instead of our own. Mostly because of the need for seating. We usually have kids' parties and we can have a lot of guests because kids can sit on the floor...but grown-ups need actual seats, right? It turned out to be a wise idea to have the shower at a friend's home because 29 ladies were in attendance--I don't think we would have all fit in our usual living room! :)

The theming mostly showed up in our food--watermelon ships sailing a watermelon sea, and we had blue "seawater" punch (from the same recipe we used for Sarah's mermaid birthday party).

Otherwise we just went with sea-blue accents on our foods of choice--like rice krispie treats, my Mom's favorite dessert!

These pinwheel wraps were just about the best thing I've ever eaten. I ate a good six pieces during "taste-testing" during party prep and then at least 10 little rolls during the party.

Even the deviled eggs had little sails in order to turn them into ships. Yeah...I have a thing for ships. In fact, one of these extremely vivid "pregnancy dreams" recently involved me discovering that my family owned not one but two boats and we were going out sailing off of the beach here. Awesome!

We had a wide variety on the guest list--those in attendance at the party ranged from 80+ years of age to kindergarten age, and came from a number of different countries. Some guests  pulled me aside to excitedly tell me that this was their very first baby shower they've ever attended, and others joked that the first time they heard the term, "baby shower," they couldn't understand why the baby needed a shower when he hadn't even been born yet! A baby shower is definitely a Western tradition that we've brought with us to Southeast Asia--yet another example of the blending of cultures that becomes a matter-of-fact part of life when you live long-term in a country that's not your own! One East-meets-West aspect of this baby shower was that we didn't actually end up opening any gifts at the shower itself. While opening gifts is a very traditional part of American baby showers, we've found that gifts are not usually opened during parties here in Malaysia, so we filled our time with other activities, like games! My favorite sort of games are those that require more in the way of brain exercise than anything else, so those are the kinds of games we played:

Who Was It, Mom or Dad?

In this game, the leader read off facts about either Angel or I as babies or young children, and guests had to all vote at once whether they thought that the fact was true about me, about Angel, or whether it was true for both of us. They voted by holding up little red or blue babies on sticks. We included various kinds of facts, such as birth statistics ("Which one was born at 3:31 a.m.?" "Which one had more hair at birth?") and milestone ages ("Which one walked at 8 months?") and a few anecdotes of early childhood. Some were pretty easy to guess, others were harder. The guests mostly know me much better than they know Angel, so we threw in some tricky questions answered with "both", like "Which one is the firstborn in their family?"--everyone knows I'm the firstborn, but since most here haven't met Angel's family, they might not also know that he's also an oldest kid. The winners of this game tied at getting 15 out of 19 answers correct!

The Price is Right

My Mom bought 5 baby items at the local grocery store, noted the exact prices, and then guests had to guess the price of the item. We used the traditional rules--closest answer without going above the actual price wins! This game was definitely the most competitive! The ladies got really into guessing the price of diapers and wipes and baby lotion and alternately expressed shock if the actual price was less than they thought it would be or much more than they thought it would be. Before guessing, they would question exactly what brand each product was, and what country it was produced in, in order to better inform their guesses. Each person who won received chocolate as a prize, so the stakes were high!

Advice Circle

We had a time for everyone to share their best advice on parenting--no need to actually be a parent to offer advice. In fact, some of the pre-teens and teens gave some pretty wise advice, like, "Patience is a virtue" and "Remember to take lots of pictures" and "Never ask your kid: 'Why did you do that?' because they probably have no idea why they did whatever they did." My Mom gave some suspiciously specific advice, which was, "Make sure to share your baby...with grandma." Other ladies advised that early potty training will save money on diapers, and continuing to invest in your marriage relationship is good for the whole family.

I felt so loved and humbled by this beautiful afternoon spent with friends and family, many who have known me half of my life! (In fact, one lady brought up a story about when I was playing the lead in a high school play and was too frustrated with the rest of the cast because on dress rehearsal night, none of them knew their lines! I feel like I would not be surprised by this sort of behavior from high schoolers nowadays, but when I was 15, I thought it was nigh unforgivable, ha!).

The day after the shower, Angel and I were both a bit in shock about the baby things we now own. Angel was hanging up baby clothes to dry and he was like, "I can't believe I'm hanging up all of these tiny clothes!" And I was like, "I know! Just now I was thinking: I can't believe that we now own toys! Who would have ever thought? Toys? In our house?" Just the beginnings of a new adventure...