Registries

When attending a shower for a friend, do you generally shop on or off the registry?

I ask because I am a registry person, especially so for babies (in contrast with bridal showers, where I will occasionally go off-registry). My feeling is that the person best knows what they need when it comes to baby items, and I want to be sure they have those things. And I'll go off registry occasionally with a bridal shower because, unless you're just graduating from college, one or both of you probably has pots and pans and dishes and utensils, and you can probably get by a little longer without a gravy boat to match your china pattern, but, when it comes to a baby shower, you probably don't have a spare infant seat. And they won't let you leave the hospital without one. I will sometimes also get a cute clothing item or a blankie or a toy or a book, but I tend to have my main gift(s) be from the baby registry.

This is on my mind because our friends who are expecting twins in June have their shower coming up this weekend. They don't have a ton of cash lying around and are expecting to have two additional people join their household in a few months, so they need a lot of stuff. They kept their registry fairly minimalist in order to ensure people gave them the things they really needed -- carseats, stroller, monitor, etc. I was worried there wouldn't be enough on it, that it would be cleaned out by a week or two before the shower.

Yet, the shower is this weekend, but the vast majority of registry items remain unpurchased. The vast majority. Including basics (at a range of prices) like the baby monitor, crib sheets, changing pad, bathtub, hooded towels, sleep sacks. (Thankfully, the carseats and stroller have been purchased, as have some less-necessary/easy-to-buy-used items (like an exersaucer) that they can exchange if needed.) When BRU was having its big sale over Presidents Day weekend, I even sent an email out to the email list that the shower hostess had used to send a save the date to let them know about the sale and offer to share some coupons I had, but mainly I sent it to remind people that they are registered there. But only five more items have been purchased in the intervening two weeks.

For some reason, this is really bothering me. I am hoping that a lot of their friends/family are real last minute shoppers who will do their shopping Saturday morning in the hours before the shower, or that some of their relatives will give them cash, but I'm not holding my breath. Do other people not shop off registries? Am I the weird one here?

Our Shower

So, our shower was two weeks ago at this point. And I never got around to posting about it. This is in part because my father was the one taking pictures, which means I will probably never actually see the pictures (or, if I do, it will be at this child's wedding), and I wanted to post said pictures with the post. Not wanting to wait any longer, I'm just going to post with pictures taken after the fact at home, such as the one on the right, which is the contents of the toy box. We didn't get all those things at the shower (we got some at my work shower and some at a yard sale and the stuffed animals were already ours), but we did get quite a few.

Needless to say, the shower was lovely -- not at all a disaster, as I had feared. (The one thing that bothered others but just struck me as par for the course related to the food. My mother and stepmother were put in charge of bringing some of the food -- namely the sandwiches. The only sandwiches they brought were crabmeat. I don't eat seafood. They are well aware of this. So I couldn't eat any sandwiches. But this was very unsurprising to me. I thought my brother was going to blow a gasket, though. Oh, and they just bought the bread and crabmeat and mayo and arrived right before the party started and then complained that they had to spend time in the kitchen putting sandwiches together while guests were there.)

As I think I mentioned before, my brother is an event planner and florist (to those who commented on our wedding photos, he did the flowers -- he's quite talented), so it should have occurred to me that he would end up doing the bulk of the work for this affair.

He apparently asked P to find the Paddington at the Seaside book that I loved as a child and that he thought was at my dad's house but was in fact at ours. Unbeknownst to me, P brought it on vacation and gave it to him. The book became the theme of the shower. I really wish I had pictures. It was very sweet. When/if my dad ever gets them to me, I'll post them.

The shower was a decidedly unstructured affair, which worked well for me and especially for P (it was coed). No ridiculous games. We mingled, we ate, we opened presents, we went home. A ton of people came (about 50) -- it's amazing to know that our baby is so well-loved already. There were also a bunch of kids there, which I thought was great. Our friends' 19-month old daughter kept bringing P goldfish while we were opening presents :)

I'm not sure if this is everyone's experience, but every shower I've ever been to (and many weddings) has ended up with a gift-of-the-shower -- the thing that the bride/parent-to-be ends up getting a ton of, as if every attendee was on the same wavelength. For my wedding shower, it was placemat/napkin sets. All in sets of 4. Evidently we are only allowed to have two other people over at a time. For our wedding, it was salad tongs. Who needs 4 sets of salad tongs? We didn't register for any, since we didn't need any, but we got 4 sets anyway. A good friend received 5 pie plates at her shower. It just seems to happen. Well, for our baby shower, the gift-of-the-shower was blankets. I was amazed by how many we received. To give a sense, here is a photo of eleven of them:

And that's not all of them. I forgot one was in the basement for washing (and this doesn't include the ones we already had). Our child will never be cold.

Oh, and new belly shots too -- I posted one last week but forgot to mention it, and I figure I'll do them weekly now. I'm not sure if this one is just closer up or what but I look much, much bigger than last week.

Relaxation

For my birthday in June, P gave me a certificate entitling me to a pre-baby spa day and a post-baby spa day. Saturday, I redeemed the former and had a maternity massage, manicure, and pedicure. That night, we went to a friend's place and sat on her deck and ate chips and grilled veggies and other foods. Then Sunday, we had our family and friends baby shower.* When I thought only of those things, I concluded I had had a very relaxing weekend and couldn't understand why I felt so wiped out on Monday morning. Which I did. Not just that I-should-go-to-bed-earlier kind of tired but the I-can't-believe-I-have-to-be-awake-ever-again kind of tired. And I still feel that way.

Then I remembered that we went out to dinner and to see the new Batman movie at the Imax on Friday night with good friends of ours.** (I highly recommend seeing it on Imax.) It wasn't an incredibly late night, but we don't usually go out both nights in a weekend these days. And late on Saturday night (post-BBQ) I also cleaned out the closet in the nursery when P was at a friend's place playing video games with the boys. I got all the junk out, moving most of it to the attic, but some to other places. I swept decades of dust off the top shelf and off the top of the built in dresser. I cleaned the nasty crap out of all the drawers. I cleaned the floor. And it finally looked like a place we could actually put things, for the first time in the three and a half years we've owned our house. Oh, and I watched some Olympics. Then Sunday, before the shower, I went to church. And we went to the hardware store to get a rod for the closet in the nursery, since there wasn't one. Then the shower, the first half of which involved a lot of standing around and talking to people and the second half of which involved sitting and being stared at (while opening wonderful gifts). I am not a big fan of being the center of attention, and having to sit in front of a room full of people while they all stare at you is exhausting. Then my dad, his fiancee, my brother, and SIL all came over to our place: my dad and his fiancee for a tutorial on using an iPod, since that's how they plan to play music at their wedding this weekend; my brother and SIL just to hang out. It was between 8 and 9 by the time everyone had left, and we still had to unload the car from the shower since it had been pouring when we got home. And then I stayed up late watching the Olympics. Oh, and I continue to do my best to gestate a person.

Perhaps this week's exhaustion is less inexplicable than I thought.

*More on that in a separate post -- I want to include a few pictures, but don't have them yet.

**Our friends started Lupron in preparation for their first IVF cycle early the next morning. I hope you will join me in sending good thoughts their way.

Bathing in Something

Yesterday, my colleagues threw P and I a surprise baby shower (we don't work together -- they invited him to come over from his office, so it wasn't a surprise for him). It was our first shower, and their generosity was truly amazing. We got so much stuff -- they all chipped in and got us our Pack N Play (and a sheet for it), our infant car seat, an extra car seat base, a Snuzzler, a play mat, a few toys, and a bunch of books. We had to use two mail carts to get it all to the car. They made chocolate chip cookies as well as frosted cookies in baby shapes (feet and ducks and letters spelling BABY) and had an ice cream cake. Mmmm...ice cream cake. I wish I had pictures! The whole thing was truly unreal. And, again, their generosity was beyond compare.

Between the gifts and the stuff we bought for ourselves used (bouncy seat, swing, and high chair), it looks like we live in a combo Graco-Fisher Price factory. Oddly, though, none of it seems real yet. It feels a bit like we're acting as if, going about our business as though we really and truly believe there will be a baby in the end, which I'm not sure I've truly integrated into my world view yet. The crib and dresser are being delivered this weekend, and we'll probably start to set up the small room at that point (since right now it only has a valance and a hamper and a closet filled with junk, which was apparently Ps idea of "cleaning out the room" -- that said, I'm really glad he did it, since clearly I hadn't done it and we really needed to paint). I suspect this all will only exacerbate this suspension of disbelief sensation.

Speaking of showers, our "big" shower (i.e. the friends and family one) isn't until August, by which point I'll be at 35 weeks. I have some serious concerns about this shower, but there isn't much I can do. My mother wanted to plan it, which seemed like the worst possible idea, given her alcoholism and narcissism and whatall. (As a couple of examples from the day she asked to plan it: She suggested doing it at the old folks home my grandmother lives in (because it would be convenient for her, even though it would be inconvenient for us and for all our friends and for all our other relatives, none of whom live near there) -- the same place she said was "too depressing" to spend Mother's Day. She also gave me two dates all summer that she was free -- both while we were on vacation. She had concert tickets for the dates that were best for us and was unwilling to miss one.) So, when she asked if she could plan it, I told her that others had also asked to be involved in planning, then I asked those others to please pretend they had asked to be involved in planning, so as to avoid certain disaster. Thankfully, my MIL and two SILs are wonderful people and are willing to take one for the team (though I think planning something with my mother -- or having to spend more than five minutes with her for any reason -- is my MILs idea of hell, and I can't say I blame her for feeling that way).

In the end, it's unclear who, if anyone, is doing what. I had to find a location and set a time myself, since no one else would. The shower is in 4.5 weeks, but no one has sent invites yet. My MIL seems to have gotten stuck doing them but no one will send her needed addresses (I sent the address list to the four of them four weeks ago, noting that I didn't have a current mailing addresses for a few folks and assigning others to find them -- relatives to the moms and friends to my SIL, since she and my brother got married last year and had to send invites to those folks then. I know they didn't send them since my MIL called me to ask for them and because I had asked them to send them to me too so we would have them as well). My mother keeps calling me with questions (like "what time is the shower" and "has someone sent invitations"). Why is she calling me? Shouldn't she know these things since she is, she claims, PLANNING THE SHOWER? And, if not, why not call my SIL? Or my MIL? Or ANYONE OTHER THAN ME? If my mother was planning it alone, it just wouldn't happen (or would happen on three days notice and no one would come), which makes me incredibly sad. Even with three other people helping, I'm still a little concerned. I should not be filled with dread about this, but it fills me with much angst these days.

I also hate that the stress I feel about it makes me feel like a spoiled brat for thinking I deserve a shower at all, much less a properly-planned and -executed one. I really am thrilled that someone wanted to throw us a shower, and I know our friends are excited to get to be there, since many of them have asked about it (since, you know, they haven't received invites yet). I constantly feel torn between this sense that the whole situation seems sucktastically ridiculous and this sense that I really need to GET OVER MYSELF. Ugh. Poop. And all other expressions that convey my desire to crawl under my desk, curl into a ball, and knock my head lightly against the wall.