YAH: Baby Shower Ideas

While I was with my family over the holidays, they threw me and my husband a baby shower.

It was very casual but we had a lot of fun so I thought I'd share some of the things we did with you. My sister Suzie made the bathtub/shower cake.

 

She made the cake in a bread pan and the shower head is the top of a small plastic champagne glass glued to a straw. The water is ribbon. It even had "claw" feet, which I didn't get a picture of. She made those with golf ball rings. And it tasted great -- pink lemonade! I also got my own cloth diaper cake (which I showed you how to make here) and baby booties (which I shared with you here).

My sister Sarah made hot chocolate sticks with marshmallows and snowman Peeps!

They were so cute! And my sister Suzie made us some onesie cupcakes!

They were onesies rolled up with a sock in the middle and they were in cupcake liners. Adorable!

We also played a few games. For the first one, everyone had to blow up a balloon to the size they thought my belly was, then put it under their shirt to compare it with mine. The kids loved this.

But the adults had fun with it, too.

My mom won that game. Another game involved cutting a piece of ribbon to the size they thought my belly was. Then everyone wrapped the ribbon around me to see if they were right. I didn't get any pictures of that because I was busy getting wrapped up! My 3-year-old niece won. She was right on. My husband, however, cut his ribbon way too long. It was almost able to go around me twice! Hmm....
The third game I want to share with you is a drinking game. But not that kind! Little plastic babies were put into lemonade ice cubes. When we had punch, each person got an ice cube for their glass.

The first person whose ice melted so the baby floated freely yelled, "My water broke!' My brother Peter got the prize for that game!
And there was one last surprise that caught me off-guard. My family sang us a song. We have a tradition of singing songs as a "gift" either for a wedding or a 40th birthday celebration. So I was not expecting one at the baby shower! It was sung to the tune of "Teach Your Children" by Crosby, Stills & Nash, but the words were changed to fit our situation. It was written mostly by my sisters Kate and Sarah and my brother-in-law Kurt played the guitar.

And of course I ended up crying through the whole thing, even though there were some funny lines.

I think part of it was the surprise and being the center of attention (I'm not very comfortable with that), but also part of it was that I honestly never thought I'd make it this far in my pregnancy. I just kept thinking of everything we've been through to get to this point and I couldn't stop the tears. But it was wonderful and I feel truly blessed to have such an amazing family!