Bubble Shower, May 23 2011

Baby shower! I can not express enough on what a wonderful time I had. It was delightful seeing so many friends and family together to celebrate Bubbles. Even if he's not here yet for another month and a bit. Which, by the way, still feels like I should have months to go. My first pregnancy seems to have pretty much flown by. I do kinda of wish it wasn't so fast, I've loved being pregnant so far. It's the coolest thing I've experienced, complete with all of the weird and strange things my body has done. I feel bad for those that don't enjoy it or just complain about everything that goes on with their bodies. I always feel kinda weird when all someone does is talk about how horrible it is, and I'm sitting here loving everything they are complaining about. ( Heart burn is not fun, I will agree to that. ) Though they all agree the end result is worth all the fuss. I'll do it again sometime, hopefully all my pregnancies go as well as this one has. I'm thinking 2 years later when Bubbles is probalbly walking about grabbing things of shelves.. or even climbing them...

The shower was suppose to be an outdoor event, however it showered outside. So it became an indoor event. My mom and sisters went about decorating the inside with stuffed bunnies. Also on of my mom's orchids went a little insane on producing a lot of flowers just in time. She told me it did that just for the shower. Like it knew. Mom always finds away to make something a little more special. She's gun ho like that. The inside windows of my mothers house is normally a jungle in it's self. She's a bit of a green thumb and loves flowers. Wouldn't have her any other way.

Also, it was a pot luck! Which I think worked out great, left over veggie and fruit trays for the win. The really amazing thing is that my mom's kitchen is actually big enough to let like 5 or 6 people run about and set up their contributions. It's a big wonderful Kitchen, even if it doesn't have any flooring yet. I can't wait for the house to be done, I think it will be excellent for entertaining and more when it's done. Anyways, I'm thankful that the pot luck snack idea was a great hit. Less time needed to have one person set up all the food the better.

What would a shower for Bubbles be with out bubbles? Yup, we had bubbles with little blue rattles. Didn't blow any since we where inside but still pretty cute party favor. I'm sure there will be lots of fun with those later and hopefully not sit around and collect dust. I'm beginning to think like my husband, "useful" things instead of something that will collect dust. We also had some pretty fun games. In which my sisters jumped right in on. The Diaper Pin game. Very simple and yet far to much fun. Basically everyone in attendance gets a Diaper pin on arrival and if they get caught saying the word "Baby" whoever catches them loses their pin to that person. The person that manages to collect the most pins wins. I failed horribly. The moment we started reading baby shower cards I was pretty much done. I tried to be sneaky and just say the boy part however, I reversed it and ended up spitting out the Baby part of the phrase. Later, Mike and I got new pins because people left and sure enough, 5 minutes later we were both pin less. Guess it just wasn't meant to be.

The other game we played was a bottle drinking game. Participants ( All men there were picked on to do this, Gill's idea not mine. My sisters jumped in on this one too. ) where each given a 4 ounce bottle of juice. At the "go" they raced and whoever finished theirs first, won. The bottles had slow flow nipples for added challenge. I think a lot of people where surprised at how hard this actually was. I know Mike was, we have video proof of his comments. My sister Andrea has it on her Facebook, it's pretty funny. Mike's dad won that one. Most people only had a ounce fished by the time he was finished. The trick? Bite the very end of the nipple to make the hole bigger. He said all of his kids did it, nothing like the trick of an experienced dad/grandpa. I'm sure Bubbles will figure it out too.

We had singing! Gill's mom brought her guitar and played for us. She made Gill sing with her, which is never too hard to do since Gill loves to sing. They managed to make me cry. Mainly because memory lane was triggered and it all came out. Gill's mom moved to Newfoundland years ago, the last time I saw her was at Gill's Birthday party before I got married. Now I know that wasn't that long ago, but to be fair there was no guitar playing then, just karaoke. My wonderful and kind sister decided to take a snap shot of me crying. (She took 99% of the pictures that are in this blog, yay facebook!) I stayed pretty red faced after that. Nothing like the sniffles to make pictures oh so much more interesting. We did action songs ( one of which had rocking movements, became pee inducing ) and danced. I discovered that Bubbles is kinda bouncy in there so I hugged the belly to keep it from moving so much.

SIS (Singing Induced Sniffles) while Mike checks up on work stuff.

Now for some random pictures of the day!
 

 

Apparently I like the right side of people. Who knew?

Baby Bubbles first haul! He and his parents thank you!

Now I'm going to touch on some of the gifts we got. We got quite a bit of stuff and I'm very thankful for it! Because of it, we are pretty much ready for Bubbles whenever he decides to come. ( Only missing the car seat to take him home in, since the hospital won't let us leave without one. ) I was also impressed with how much Bunny stuff people managed to find. I know when I was looking I could hardly find a lot of baby boy bunny stuff. ( Most of it was pink... Bunnies are unisex come on! ) We even got a pattern for a soft book ( A Fabric book ) that my mom could make. I'm also debating cutting the pages out and framing them, but I'm unsure. Maybe Bubbles could just drool all over it.

Speaking of books! Bubbles now has a mini library of books. I got tons of books when I was a kid, it's only fair that he does to. We got Little critter books, Dr Seuss books, Spot's adventures, books with art by Eric Carle (The guy who arted hungry caterpillar) and many more. Personally, I love the idea of children's books. Even if I'm not a avid book reader. Despite this when ever I'm with a group of children I typically end up reading to them. So I'm well prepared!

Bubbles place of sleeping for the first 3 months of life.

Another gift I'm very thankful for is this home made Cradle that was made by Uncle Larry. ( He's not really my Uncle.. but I can't help but call him that, just like it's Aunty Gwen. ) A shower gift from the Ness family, who I've known since before I was born. Tiffany and my parents where friends when both Aunty Gwen and my mom where pregnant. This, I'm sure, will be used for more then just Bubbles, which is why I'm thankful it comes a part! Otherwise I think storing it could be a great big pain in the butt.

The biggest gift we got was from my mother. I'd post of a picture of it but it's not ready as of yet. My mom got us the crib for bubbles. The reason it's not quite ready is that it came from an unfinished furniture store. So, my mother has been busy adding the finish to the crib. Once it's done I will certainly post a picture of it. It's very beautiful from what I've seen and it came with pieces to become a double bed. I can't wait to get everything set up in his little room. However, I can wait on getting woken up at 3 am.

Oh! Also, packaging. Oh my gosh the packaging on some of the gifts. I just about went crazy trying to snip off some of those tiger tails!( The plastic thing that keeps things on the packaging often found on socks. Yes, I worked in retail far too long. ) Some of the towels (Disney you may be awesome but like 10 of them on a towel? Really? ) it was quite the challenge getting them out of there. Eventually you get the hang of snipping out little tiny tiger tails, it doesn't make it any less annoying. I can't imagine trying to do that with other small kids around trying to get your attention. I suspect they are put in bed and asleep while mom and/or dad open up packaging of baby stuff.

I'm sure we will be getting more things from people, new or hand me downs from other little boys. All of it helps and all of it we are thankful for. I'm so thankful for all we've gotten so far and I can't wait to have people over to meet Bubbles when he does finally come. ( Not all at once, planing on spacing it out for over a week or two. ) I know I'm excited about finally meeting him, or her if that 2% does in fact happen. (She'll have lots of blues and greens to wear!) Bubbles is already flipped and in position to make the exit into the world that is eagerly waiting to embrace him.