Baby Shower 1
The first baby shower is in the books, so I guess baby Gribble is official. Of course, we still don’t know if it’ll be a he or a she. As you may well know, we are planning to wait to find out when s|he is finally born sometime around the end of March or the beginning of April. At least that’s the plan!
We had a lot of fun catching up with some of Jess’s family. The turnout was very good. Thanks to baby Gribble’s great aunt Martha for planning everything and Grandma and Grandpa Hazelton for graciously hosting the event! Both sides of the family were represented, driving in from the Columbus area, Pepper Pike, South Euclid, Cuyahoga Falls, and Newark, Ohio; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Allison Park, PA.
There were a few relatives we hadn’t even met! It was a pleasure to get to know my cousin Ashe and my cousins’ young daughters Lucy (Leah and Jared) and Mia (Andrew and Regan). They’re all total sweethearts. We started out with a delicious meal of sandwiches, meatballs, ham, cheese, pickles, salad, cake, cookies, pies, olives, etc. Dave and I were lucky enough to hang around a few days afterward to eat the leftovers!
After we’d all eaten, we gathered in the family room to open presents. It was like Christmas, except that everything was for us! We were a bit overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of stuff. Great aunt Martha found outfits that will fit from birth through eighteen months, including all the holidays in between!
Baby Gribble will be far more stylish than either parent ever was. Can you believe that Martha even found a Thanksgiving outfit!? Baby clothes are ridiculously cute, and we’ve got more ducks, giraffes, turtles, and lions than you can shake a stick at. Hooded towels. Baby shampoo. And several of the large items we really need to get the baby home from the hospital and asleep! We’re going to use the old crib my brothers and I had (with super-fun spinny plastic disks), and Mom and Dad found all the bedding we’d need. We got a carseat and matching pack ‘n play (little elephants) and the lime green stroller we wanted. The Styblos gave us a beautiful quilt.
While I don’t remember this, Elaina says that in high school I said that if I ever had a baby shower, I wanted some gifts for myself—the baby would get enough. Well, the baby got plenty, and Elaina gave me one of our favorite movies (Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man), a book about women motorcyclists through history, and a juicy romance novel. Perfect!
After we opened our gifts, we adjourned to the kitchen and living room for dessert and playtime. I got a chance to flip Evers upside down a few dozen times, which was really fun for both of us. (We’d only met three times or so, so I was glad to spend some time with him.) He and Ashe ran in circles through the downstairs with Spongebob Squarepants and Bob the Builder for a while.
We said goodbye to all the grownup relatives who had driven in: Uncle Bob and Cindy, the whole Mazak clan (minus Uncle Andrew and Jared), Aunts Nancy and Shirlie, Matt and Erin, N and Laura, and the Baskeys (Josh and Sarah have become a young woman and man since we’ve last seen them!). The men got to go out and help pick up a car that had wound up with one wheel off the slippery driveway, which N pointed out was a good antidote to all the baby stuff they’d had to suffer.
Really, the perfect day! Not too much squealing about the clothes (which were definitely cute enough to squeal about). Lots of gifts that will be used and enjoyed by baby Gribble and parents. And a great opportunity to see family that we hardly ever get to spend time with.