I Suck At Baby Showers

Yesterday, Karen and I had a baby shower for our daughter (Briana). Unfortunately, I suck at baby showers. Luckily, my favorite sister-in-law (Janine) organized the entire event. In fact, Janine did an amazing job in the organizing and planning of the event that I will be forever grateful. I guess that is why she is my favorite. Thank you Janine!

For anyone curious, our daughter (Briana) was born on St. Patrick's Day. It may seem odd to have a baby shower almost two months after her birth. The reason for the two month time span is due in part to Briana's older brother (Braden). Braden, our first child, was born extremely premature at 22 weeks 6 days. The week before his birth, Karen and I had done the customary creating of a baby registry. Braden only survived a week and Karen and I have been dealing with his loss since.

Needless to say, when Karen was pregnant with Briana, we were hesitant to create another baby registry until Briana was actually born. We obviously did not want to relive all the excitement of getting our hopes up, only to see them come crashing down again should our child unexpectedly pass away without any explanation. Consequently, we had planned to have our baby shower for Briana after Briana's original due date in May.

As it turns out, Briana, in some ways like her brother Braden, was born premature. Unlike Braden, however, Briana stayed in gestation a lot longer... till 33 weeks. As we never changed the date of the original baby shower, it would be almost two months until everyone could gather for the shower.

And truth be told, Karen and I really weren't expecting that many gifts for the shower. After all, it had been two months since Briana was born. We simply wanted a day to hang out with our friends and family and celebrate Briana.

It turns out that I am blessed to have some amazing friends and family. I would be remiss if I did not say thank you to all of my friends and family, those who took part in the shower and those who could not. I know that I will forever be grateful to everyone. And again, I think Janine did an amazing job for going above and beyond to organize, plan, and host the shower.

I only wished that I could have spent more time with everyone at the shower. With so many people and so little time, it made socializing and personally thanking everyone almost impossible. It almost reminded me of my wedding... another event which I wanted to see everyone and thank them for being a part of my life. With life's hectic schedule, there's just not enough time in a given day to see and hang out with every friend and family member. You almost wish that there could have been an after-party of sorts for after the shower.

Regardless, the baby shower was amazing. I had a great time. I feel bad that Janine had to do so much (and injure her leg and break some crystal in the process). When everyone had left, it was fun hanging out with Janine and her BFF (Gretchen), who helped us bring all of our gifts to our place.

And as a side note, Gretchen and I made a pit stop at the local Tedeschi in Hingham. The only reason why I bring it up is because the incident made me think about how I want Briana to be thankful of things. At Tedeschi, there was a young kid with a mohawk buying assorted items. He already had some items on the counter before adding a snickers bar to the collection. When the clerk rang up his order, the kid simply reached into his pocket and pulled out all the loose change he had. The kid was short on the funds. Rather than put the snickers bar back, he simply... stood there for a prolonged amount of time and did nothing.

It was not until some complete stranger plopped down the necessary money for the kid that he was able to buy all the items. From there, the kid then left the store without even so much as a thank you to the complete stranger. In my opinion, it was so rude and something that I don't want my daughter to ever do. I want Briana to appreciate the kindness of other people's actions... or at least understand basic math and know how to determine if she has enough money for candy.

Anyway, that was a tangential story that had been somewhat indicative of my feelings during entire day. Again, I cannot say thank you enough to everyone involved in Briana's life. I just hope that they know how appreciative I am. So thank you everyone!