This weekend was my baby shower. To say that I felt loved and appreciated would be the understatement of the year.
I’ve always known that I have great friends and family. But sometimes I’m blown away by just how amazingly wonderful and supportive they all are. My sister Melissa took the bus up from NYC, Jen(nie) flew up from Washington, DC, my sister Christina drove down from Vermont and various other relatives and friends drove in from all over.
The shower was the main event, but I think that the best part of the weekend was spending so much time with my loved ones.
Friday night was supposed to be nostalgia night, with dinner at a chinese restaurant that we all used to go to in high school. Unfortunately, Boston traffic had other plans for me. What should have been a 30-45 minute drive home from work ended up taking me two excruciating hours. Kristian took our new car to Vermont for the weekend and the old one that I drove is feeling the effects of sitting in our driveway 95% of the time. I kept having to call Kristian to describe noises to him and ask for assurance that I wasn’t going to lose a wheel in the middle of the highway.
The stress of breaking down in the middle of a two hour backup very likely might have put me into labor. And, while it maybe would have been cool to make the news, I have no desire to let this kid go anywhere for at least three more weeks.
By the time I got home, I was down to about negative seven nerves. Lucky for me, I have the best friends in the world. Jen(nie) and Beans showed up at our house with takeout and we spent a fantastic evening on the deck eating chinese food and having girl talk.
Saturday morning I got together with Jen(nie) and my mom, step-dad and sisters for brunch at the Neighborhood Restaurant. We’ve been going there as a family since I was a baby. Although the lines are a lot longer now that the hipsters have all discovered Union Square (when we put our names in, there were fourteen groups ahead of us), the brunch is just as good as it’s always been and is in no way, shape or form ironic. Also, they give you so much food, it sometimes takes up two plates. For one person. Seeing as how I have about two weeks before this baby annexes my stomach and I have to start eating like a bird again, I was all about the giant brunch.
Puffy Hope is puffy. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten quite so many home fries.
Apparently I have developed a bit of a reputation for exaggeration. I have absolutely no idea where this came from.
(Ha!).
Which is why Melissa was shocked to discover that my cankles really are big enough to merit their own weather system. Or at least that they contain about six pounds of extra water weight. At this point, she promptly ordered me to put my feet up against the wall at our mom’s house and to encourage gravity to work its magic on some of the fluid buildup. I think that our endeavors were at least moderately successful. Either that or the thirty degree temperature drop over the weekend finally kicked in.
My sister Christina is just a little bit too pleased that her feet are (finally) cuter than mine.
After letting all of my blood rush from my feet to my head, I drove Jen(nie) out to Concord, where we met up with Beans and enjoyed a lovely chat in the shade while looking out over Beans’ family farm and eating freshly picked blueberries. And then Jen(nie) and Beans worked on shower preparations while I took a nap. They swore up and down that I wasn’t drooling and snoring in my chair, but I think we all know better.
Have I mentioned that my friends are the best?
I left Jen(nie) and Liza to continue their elf work and headed home for another family get-together. Kristian took a break from working on house renovations to smoke a couple of chickens and we all spent some quality time out on our deck. It was a nice mix of the serious (talk about our impending child birth) and the silly (a dramatic reading of Us Weekly). Beans and Jen(nie) showed up a little bit later, farm-fresh corn in hand, and we all enjoyed a lovely meal together.
I think that my favorite part of the day was swinging in the hammock after dinner with Melissa, looking up at the stars and talking about bees. It was a tender moment… at least until Gummy Bear decided to start whacking me in the bladder and I had to make a mad dash for the bathroom. I guess I’d better go ahead and get used to my daughter interrupting me at inopportune moments. Because that’s pretty much what I’ve signed myself up for.
It’s funny to write a post about my baby shower and then stop before I actually talk about my baby shower. But this post is long enough already, so I’ll recap the shower itself in a subsequent update.
(Spoiler alert! People bought us stuff!)
sweet!