A Long, Hot Bath Would Have Been Much More Relaxing, But Definitely Lonelier
If you’ve ever read my blog before, you might have noticed I sort of like planning and organizing small intimate casual parties for my kid or my friends.
So I decided to follow in the footsteps of my friend Audrey and throw a Baby Celebration Party for Baby Girl. Not a shower, because throwing yourself a party where you basically say “OH HAI, BRING ME PRESENTS” is unnecessary and kind of rude for a second baby (in my opinion), but I still wanted my daughter to know her pending arrival was just as exciting and celebration-worthy as her brother’s.
Of course, being 35 weeks pregnant AND the mother of a toddler is fairly exhausting. And the morning of the shower I woke up feeling like death warmed over. Really, seriously, painfully awful (in pregnancy related ways, not in contagious diseases sort of ways) and after rolling sugar cookie dough for only a few minutes I was almost in tears thinking about how much I still had to do before my guests showed up.
THANK GOD my in-laws and two of my very best friends Erin (from the wedding) and Erin (who wrote a guest post for me here and let me post pictures of her kid here) were staying with us for the party, because they – along with my amazing husband – did ALL the work for me. Even the night before the shower when I was still planning to do it myself they helped out stringing pennants and gluing craft paper. And of course Wedding Erin spent a ZILLION HOURS on an amazing – and incredibly delicious – custom themed cake. I, on the other hand, mostly sat in a chair and pointed at things.
(As a side note, I now know E is not only capable of following recipe instructions without my standing over his shoulder, but he can BAKE LIKE A MOFO. The thumb print cookies he made were ridiculously tasty – not a single one left over. He may live to regret letting that slip.)
It was especially nice of my in-laws and The Erins to help after I didn’t have blankets, pillows, food for breakfast or time to clean my rather disgusting bathroom before they got here. I’m not sure there was ever a time I was LESS prepared to have house(or any kind of)guests in my life. I used to be the hostess who not only had guest towels that coordinated with each room’s decor, but little baskets of toiletries, soaps, toothbrushes and tea waiting for them just in case they forgot or needed them. This time I barely got up off the couch to say “Hey thanks for coming!” I didn’t even manage to sort of clean up the new master bedroom before my party guests came over even though I KNEW I would end up giving a tour. So all my friends saw my literal dirty laundry.
As as far as having the new nursery done before the shower? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
So in the end everything was awesomely awesome and I am really glad I decided to shower myself, even if it was a little overwhelming.
Of course, 50% of the reason I even HAD the party was so I could show pictures of my cute theme and decorations here on the blog. I promise to have those up soon. It will be TOTALLY WORTH coming back to check them out. That is, if you like that sort of thing. I apologize in advance for about a gazillion pictures if you don’t.
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Tags: baby 2, baby sandy, baby shower, family, friends, party, planning, pregnancy
Can’t wait for the pics! And isn’t it nice to have amazing friends and family?
Can’t wait for the pics!
Wohoo! I can’t wait for the pics either. Happy Baby Girl! :D
A baby celebration sounds like a wonderful idea. Glad it went well and your helpers made you sit and relax. I want to see the pictures!
E made those?? They were absolutely delicious. I usually don’t go for thumbprint cookies but they looked so good and they did not disappoint! It was a fantastic party-thank you so much for including us!
I can’t wait to see lots of pictures! Living far away blows!
I can’t wait to see pictures. And I’m sure that everyone totally understands why their guest towels didn’t match their room decor!
It was a lovely party, and I never would have guessed you weren’t feeling well! Everything looked perfect. And those thumbprint cookies – best I’ve ever had! I was actually planning on asking for the recipe…
Can’t wait to see the pictures!
I’m exhausted just thinking about being that kind of hostess. I’m totally coming to visit you someday.
And, like everyone else – I can’t wait to see the pictures. :-)
I love the idea of parties for kids after the first one. One of my cousins, who lives in a different state, had one for her second girl which means I got to actually meet her first girl and see her family again. And of course we brought something for both kids, but I in no way felt OBLIGATED to do so, if that makes sense. (If you’re interested, about half the people didn’t bring any gifts (or brought food), about 1/4 of those who brought gifts brought stuff for the older sister only or in addition to, and a bunch of people brought hand me downs and stuff they mentioned had been thrifted or bought on sale. Or stuff that was personalized with a name. It was interesting!)
I had about a 75% gift-bringing rate but almost all of them were the kind of beautiful handmade gifts someone makes because they actually love you and not because you registered for them. I just felt really bad that people who followed my SPECIFIC WRITTEN REQUEST not to bring gifts might have felt awkward. Especially because after 1 or 2 people asked that I open THEIR gifts I ended up opening everyone’s.
I think the lesson I learned is that not mentioning gifts at all is probably best, and if anyone says “Oh where are you registered?” you can always say “No thank you.”
Yeah. The only reason I can think of for registering for stuff is if your kids are REALLY far apart, your new baby has been diagnosed with specific medical issues and needs stuff for that, your house burned down and you lost your old baby stuff, you’ve got SURPRISE! twins, etc.