this weekend i entered the most secretive of secretive places, a thing that no man ever experiences, it's not a baccalaureate party , they have male cops or fire fighters or other uniformed guy. its not a book club or an Alanis Morissete concert. i am talking about the baby shower. its true, there are co-ed baby showers, but this was different around 25 woman + me (well + one feuds still unborn). I am here to tell you all about this bastion of woman.
I had my concerns about attending this event, didn't know what to expect, what to do, and most importantly, what not to say or do as not not embarrass the expecting mother, so I took a big book with me just in-case i have to sit in the garage and wait for the party to be over.
we left our house 2 minutes before the party started, which is a record for us this year i think and were only 20 minutes late for our own party, the room was full of estrogen by the time we arrived. A Russian crowd arriving on time is something rarely seen. we settled in and a few minutes later, the hostess .a,k.a sister in law Rita asks me what game to start to break the ice. I am of course the wrong person to ask, if you want to know why, read the paragraph above this one. lucky someone takes charge and people are herded towards the food- salads, Salmon, caviar, potatoes. I wait till the end of the line since we had a late brunch today, but few people suggest i eat something (lots of Jewish moms here...), so i take an orange plate of salmon, carrots and oranges, peppers when the 1st game begins.
a blue ribbon is presented and each person must identify the correct girth of Alla's belly, most guesses were way off, not sure if that's a compliment or not. i try to guesstimate by the length of my hug, but i need to asses my own body as well. I come close to the being the closest, but 2 estimates are better.
I continue to try to finish my plate of orange things when the next game is decided and its my game.
my game was simple- power point of multiple choice questions such as, what did Alla do when she found out, how she plans to decorate the baby room etc.. the crowd had to shout out their answers and each question prompted a discussion of about a minute with most question receiving all possible answers by the various individuals.- the most important question from my end is what color i said the wall was after it was painted in pool blue- i said it was green.
i resumed attempting to finish of my orange plate when the 3rd game begun, lucky i had a big brunch or this would have become the hunger games.
next came a set of few games
one was to guess baby names- a sheet of paper was given with clues about 15-20 clues of boy and girl names- such as "when flowers bloom" for girls- April or may (this game will not work well in Israel, there is no girls name February or march). this was an easy question, most were but some were harder. i like this kind of activity, especially the competition part of it. some people cheated!!! in a baby shower and contacted out side help!! and even shared effort. i was close again, but no victory.
next came a guess the word baby in different languages- its easy to spot Russian fonts- but not so trivial to differentiate Japanese ad Chinese if you never tried to notice the difference- i try logic and get this one right- Chinese is more artsy but fail between Spanish, dutch and German, again come in close and not close enough
during the process, people talk, eat some more, wish us happiness and give advice, a regular party.
the last game is some sort of torture.
we have 8 organic baby foods, without labels, we have to set them on our plate and identify what they are - we have the total list of options.
i don't recall what i ate as a baby, no one does i guess, and thanks heavens for that, that was the worst thing imaginable. i was making involuntary faces as i was trying to determine the different between a despicable winter squash to horrible butter nut squash (not winter) and something else. yuk! poor babies.
after sampling a few- they all start to taste the same, my pallet is so messed up right now that i even mis-guess the banana (with something else). i manage to guess 3 right- by color- green for spinach and the worst tasting one for the winter squash. after that i need immediate emergency taste bud relief. a whole can of orange juice doesn't do it. i try a few more things with no luck, the after taste remains. kiwi comes to the rescue, these are thinly cut, i basically just eat them of the big serving plate (and receive a comment about it, kind of a double dipping thing), but it was an emergency... so bad.
after the games , its time for the present , which mostly we chose of the registry, but it is still very nice to see them unwrapped. lots of bags with gifts and when they open, i get a dedicated commentary on the usage of every specific item, for what it is used, why is it needed etc.. very use full. strangely the present that is clearly my favorite is a toy giraffe , the most unusable item, but i had a fetish for those.
its time to clean, say good bye and thanks to the guests, the hosts and the kiwi, fully load the car with all the gifts. and now the rest of the guys come in...
thank you all for the amazing gifts, and a fun event.
so guys, if you are invited, you can attend, its fun and no one bites
p.s- photos to follow soon
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