Well after a morning of about as much productivity as you can get from a roly-poly pregnant lady in the heat Husbando has taken Pascoe to the dog park leaving me with a wee bit of time and no feeling of responsibility to clean up – so I’m going to update you on my shower and, as requested by Stella, tell you what I got!
First off I have to say that my fellow Spilt Milk Moms throw one mean shower. It exceeded even my incredibly high expectations! The ladies handmade the invitations and brought together an adorable rubber duckie theme with the colours of Little Miss’ nursery – spring green and pink.
Check out the nibbles table with all my favourites:
The take home party favours:
And @Baby2009 ’s sister made the most amazing Scandinavian cake (a vanilla sponge cake, with raspberry jam, smothered in whipping cream and then topped with maripan fondant). I’ve never had it before but OMG was it amazingly delicious.
The Cake:
Check out our little family made of marzipan! Pascoe even has a ‘P’ on his collar!!!
There were also other amazing details – the most delicate pink peonies (my favourite flower in the whole world), a yummy fruity champagne punch and poor-man’s non-alcoholic mojitos. All of the gifts were incredibly wrapped as well but I have to confess that we were having such a good time that after the initial photo taking we just enjoyed ourselves and our wonderful friends (I know, I know, what kind of blogger am I?)
So, now to answer Stella’s question – We were spoiled!
We were given Little Twig body wash and body milk (I adore their gorgeous line of products because they are natural based and they list each and every ingredient on their website and I can pronounce them all!), some adorable clothes (including the cutest ruffly knickers from Emily of If This Works) and The Happiest Baby on the Block book from Tara. I’ve already finished the book and I have to say out of all of the books I’ve read so far it seems to be the one that makes the most sense. As we were told by other friends – even if you don’t necessarily agree with his methods, his theory is really interesting and makes sense. Plus he never asks you to do anything that goes against a natural parental instinct, which to me is paramount. There is no way to learn how to do this parenting gig aside from just doing it and any book that asks parents to go against their natural instincts (i.e. let their child cry for hours) is only undermining the parents confidence in my opinion.
We also got this:
And some adorable homemade burp cloths and blanket, and an organic crinkle toy (which is her first real toy!) and a coffee grinder for husbando (which is kind’ve a silly story but has made me a full on coffee bean convert!) @Barbaroni and family gave us the FAB Chicco Hippo chair which attaches to the table (or in our case it will be attaching the the breakfast bar on our island) but its fully portable which makes going out and about very easy:
And this guy arrived just after we got home:
And just check out the bum on this adorable (and teeny tiny) onesie from @mama_jo and family:
But hands down my favourite present has to be this guy:
See I met “C” (@barbaroni’s husband) during our first semester at college. We became friends really quickly when we both auditioned for (and got cast in) a production of The Tempest and by the end of the year there was a small group of us that were pretty inseparable. We used to do stupid things that only college students do like drive to Whistler (3.5+ hours) at 11pm just to have a snowball fight or drive to Taco Bell in the US for burritos in the middle of the night and laugh as the customs agents tried to figure out if we were crazy or smugglers! One day during one of our “roadtrips” I found Ernie in a secondhand store and he kinda became our mascot – always joining us on adventures.
After college “C” and I lived together for a couple years and one Christmas we decided that it would be the FUNNIEST THING EVER if we sent out one of those “family portrait” Christmas cards. So we made an appointment at the local Sears photo studio and I wore this vintage 1950’s dress and “C” a shirt and tie and we had a family portrait taken with Ernie as our “child”. (I’ll never forget how confused the photographer was!) And then sent them to everyone we knew. I have no idea how they went down but I don’t think it matters because even now when I think about it I can’t help but laugh my ass off. Anyways… it was while we were living together that I decided to move to the UK and so I packed what I could and threw the rest away and just always figured that Ernie had been lost somewhere between the intercontinental move and all the little moves that followed. Until I was handed a gift bag last week with a special gift in it for Little Miss just from Uncle C.
I couldn’t believe it when I saw it – it literally brought tears to my eyes. I don’t know whether it was because he’d secretly kept it all these years with a view to giving it back to me when I had kids or just seeing such a brilliant reminder of such happiness and fun or whether the whole thing – Ernie himself and being given back to me – made me wish and hope that Little Miss be blessed with friends as wonderful as the ones I have. As we all age and grow it can be hard to treasure those friendships and dynamics do change – I now spend more time with my male friends’ wives as I do with them but Ernie was a gorgeous reminder, on a day where our wonderful friends gathered together to celebrate the transition Husbando and I are about to make, that these are the ties that bind our hearts and make our lives worth living.
