I never had a bridal shower and I had somewhat of an unconventional wedding. So it came as no surprise when I started thinking early on into my pregnancy about what my baby shower wouldn’t be.
For starters, it wouldn’t be a painful occasion in which women sat around in a circle doing arts and crafts while I opened presents. Nor would we play any silly games. No disrespect to the scores of women who have conventional baby showers, but it’s just not for me.
Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand and respect the reasons for having a shower when you are expecting your first child. The expecting parents need things. A lot of things. But the key word here is, parent-sss.
When I first set out thinking about a shower I knew it would be a “Jack & Jill.” Jason was one half of the reason why I was pregnant in the first place. What absolved him of requesting these things from family and friends, too?
Because I knew the shower would fall some time in the summer, it was a no-brainer to plan an outdoor BBQ in my parents expansive backyard on Long Island. The yard I grew up in. The yard I got married in. And since the majority of our friends have children and dogs, we decided that they would be invited, too.
We designed our very own baby shower invites in Photoshop and proceeded to plan an outdoor BBQ for June 5th, with a rain date of the following Saturday, June 12th.
Our DIY shower invites!
My brother and his wife flew in for the party and camped out in our apartment in Brooklyn Heights the week leading up to the shower while Jason and I took a stay-cation at my parents house in Northport. It was a bit odd, being displaced like that during the week, but it allowed us to plan and prepare for a BBQ in which we were expecting 50 adults, 13 children and seven dogs.
I ran four miles with my dad the morning of the shower while dark clouds moved along steadily, and ominously, above us. When we got home, we had a family meeting with Jason on speakerphone (he had to go back in to the city for work), and my husband’s wife sitting mum, but as supportive as ever.
My dad wanted to call the shower off and after Jason saw the weather reports, he too, was in favor of postponing it until the following week. However my mom, who has a tendency to go into stress mode when planning big occasions at our home, was in favor of goin for it, while my best friend Lauren chimed in via text message: “It will work out, it always does.”
I couldn’t help but take the weather personally. After all, it had rained on our wedding day, too. But on our wedding day there was a gigantic tent pitched in the backyard, not to mention the luck of something up above that stopped the rain and brought out the sun one hour before the ceremony started. Would we have such luck again?
In the end, the women prevailed. The shower would go on. And while I was happy to just be getting it over with, I prayed to God it wouldn’t pour.
It didn’t.
In fact, each hour came and went with intense heat and a light breeze, but no rain. Not even a clap of thunder could be heard in the distance.
The shower was a huge success and a ton of fun, complete with children running around squealing with delight, dogs chasing one another (even Ella got in on the fun), and a table full of wonderful gifts that we did NOT open in front of everyone.
Leave it to our baby shower for their to be some gambling, too! Lauren made us a baby pool in which you can guess the sex of the baby and the date that it will be born. Only one person’s name can occupy a box and it’s $5 per box to play. No one chose my due date, August 8th, under boy or girl, and the majority of the guesses have me going early with a boy. The lucky winner takes home the pool which is up to $160.
As I walked around the yard making sure that the coolers were always full, the dog bowls had cold water and that my vegetarian friends had their fill of soy dogs and veggie burgers, I took great joy in seeing my childhood friends’ children running around. It turned out that so too, did my friends. That night Sharon said to me, “I was sitting in your kitchen and Ashley was going ‘mommy, mommy,’ and I thought, how cool? I grew up in this kitchen and now here’s my kid sitting where I once sat.”
The next day, Tish wrote me and said, “I cannot tell you what Saturday meant to me, to be around your parents and my children in a backyard I grew up in. It brought back so many memories.”
To think I will join them in those same feelings in less than two months from now — to be creating new memories where there are already so many old. Let’s just say that the mere thought of it leaves me feeling pretty damn good.
One could make a joke or two about the placement of that knife!
