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Operation baby shower

If you're going to a baby shower, I highly recommend taking some LED ducks. They were a huge hit with the under-four set and the adults too. Definitely worth the drive out to Short Pump. After the unwrapping, the little kids latched on to the ducks (which stayed in their container in order for easy recovery after the party) and either poked their fingers through the holes to activate the ducks, or gnawed on the container if they weren't quite old enough to grasp the concept.

This baby, of the duckies and all the shower gift buying, is Oz's son's baby. Oz still shudders whenever he hears the word "Grandpa" and he heard it plenty today. Anyway, I'm just the baby-daddy's daddy's girlfriend. Nothing like a Grandma, and I'm only eleven years older than Oz's son anyway. Still, I heard "Grandma" in reference to myself rather more than I expected. As in "Who's this gift from? Oh, Grandma and Grandpa." And "Well, if you get an extra car seat, you can put it in Grandma and Grandpa's car."

The shower was held at the mother-to-be's father's house. When Oz told me where it was, I figured it was a big house. I hadn't figured on the pool, hot tub, and driveway on steroids (parking lot) filled with really big trucks. There was a Porsche too. Obviously going into computers and technology was a waste of time. We should have become hair stylists, like the other Grandpa.

Everyone at the shower had really good hair. The women all had serious hair, cleavage, and high heels. Except me. The mother-to-be does hair too. Now that she's in charge of Oz's son's hair, he's looking downright presentable. She also took charge of naming the baby, which is going to save them a fortune in therapy down the road.

This was a full on traditional baby shower, with games and favors, and also a big family party with lots of men, boys, Swedish meatballs and booze. I realized this was a different kind of shower when the mother-to-be teetered by on her high wedge sandals carrying a blue jello shot. "They told me this one was non-alcoholic." The baby is a boy, so of course the jello shots would be blue.

Having arrived a bit late, we missed most of the shower games, so I was left wondering why everyone was decorated with brightly painted clothespins and beaded diaper pins with plastic baby-themed charms. We did participate in making birthday cards for every year of the kid's life. I got year eleven and wished the kid "Happy Birthday" in three languages. We cut pieces of (baby blue) yarn for a game to estimate the girth of the mother-to-be. The winner of that game was a little girl who had the advantage of being at eye-level with the tummy. As many-feet-too-long pieces of yarn were wrapped around her, the mother-to-be said, "Didn't anybody guess too short?" We watched the grand opening of the huge pile of gifts. I took lots of pictures (Ish. That was kind of Grandma-like, wasn't it?) and wore down the batteries in my speedlight.

We are now partied out. I could never have kids. The ritual alone would kill me.