Baby Shower

What a lovely day!

Yesterday my friend Charlotte gave me a call and said, "please tell me you don't have any plans for tomorrow"....and of course I didn't because I'm unemployed and 7 months pregnant, so unless I'm counting my plans to eat and take a nap at some point then I'm always free. Without any clues as to what was going on, she picked me up about 11:00am today and asked if I wanted to go for a coffee first. I said "sure" so off we go for 'coffee'....we parked the car, started walking and then she steered me into Kastro, our friend's restaurant. She says "We're going here" with her little sneaky giggle she'd had since yesterday, and there I see a table set up, balloons and a few of my good friends waiting for us. What a nice surprise!!

Obviously you know which one is me, so going clockwise around the table from there we have Charlotte, the secret party planner extraordinaire (she is also pregnant, 20 weeks, due in October), Kasia (also pregnant, 24 weeks, due in September), Naomi and Tara (our experienced moms), and Nicci (our single girl who will probably never have children after some of the conversation that took place at that table today) 

We had coffee and this amazing cake! It was like a chocolate mousse inside with just a thin layer of chocolate cake. YUMMY!! It's supposed to say It's a Girl but Greeks don't do baby showers so apparently the Greek guy who was supposed to write this on the cake was completely confused by the whole thing. So we have what looks like one word: ItSagirl...eh, it's pretty close.

We played some hilarious games. This one got some weird looks from the men beside us who were trying to have lunch. There's 5 diapers and each one has a different kind of chocolate smooshed inside.  I had to eat the chocolate and guess what kind it was haha. Apparently there are pictures to follow of me with a fork digging into a diaper...appetizing! I didn't do very well at this game though, surprisingly. Even though this little one has me craving sweets almost all the time (which is totally unlike me, I usually turn down dessert or I take 2 bites of it and don't want anymore) I was only able to identify the milk chocolate. The others were chocolate with marzipan, chocolate with hazelnuts, a nutella-type chocolate and a chocolate with yogurt. The chocolate with yogurt had me totally confused because I've never had anything like that before. I could see there was like a cream center to it, something like a Cadbury's Creme egg but I didn't know what the taste was...I even guessed chocolate orange which had Charlotte looking at me like I was insane haha.

Then we also did 2 blind fold games. For one I was given Winnie the Pooh in the center of the table and a diaper and I had to put the diaper on Pooh while blind folded. I did that without any problem at all so I guess I'll be able to change diapers in my sleep....apparently I was a little rough with Pooh though so maybe I shouldn't count on that...I was also supposed to pin a cloth diaper to Pooh blind folded but when I told everyone that I hadn't actually ever seen a cloth diaper before they let me do it without the blind fold. This really didn't turn out so well. I guess I'll be buying Pampers for Eleni. Sorry Environment. I'll give back in some other way, I promise.

The other blind fold game was guess the baby food.......YUCK!!!! Horrible!! How do they feed babies that stuff anyway?!?! The first one was a fruit blend which was ok but really sugary and I don't think I would want my baby eating something that sugary. That one was palatable at least. The other 2 almost made me gag! Vegetables, and Chicken with Vegetables...ew ew ew ew ew! I couldn't swallow them, I spat them into a napkin. They had the texture of mashed potato but tasted like chicken soup with plastic in it. Again, not something I would want to feed my baby. I guess I will be making my own baby food like I had planned. Anyway, somehow I was good at this tasting game but crap at the chocolate one which is strange.

Then the girls had a game where they had to take a roll of string and guess how long of a piece they would need to go all the way around my belly at it's biggest point. I was looking at Tara thinking she was insane for picking the smallest piece, but in the end it turned out she was almost exactly right. So then of course I turned on everyone else and told them they were all jerks. Especially Kasia, she could've wrapped that piece of string around me twice! It was funny. I'll just have to get Kasia back in August when it's her turn for a baby shower!

The rest of time we talked non-stop about babies and pregnancy and delivering babies and how the first days/weeks/months are after you give birth are and of course our usual talk about Greek husbands since we all have one...except for poor little Nicci. Not because she doesn't have a Greek husband...it's because of all the baby conversation she put up with today. It's a good thing Nicci's always such a good sport but I really think she'll be having some nightmares after this. Especially when the topic of nipple extensions was brought up. I have to admit, I hadn't heard of a nipple extension either but logically I figured it's probably like a nipple shield or whatever we call them in Canada, where if you're having a rough time breast feeding you just put that thing on there and the baby can latch on easier. Tara (the other Tara, you've probably figured out by now that there's 2 Tara's) started saying something about "well when your nipples are bleeding...." and that's when I thought for sure Nicci would either pass out or be sick. Or both..."NIPPLE EXTENSIONS?!?! BLEEDING?!?! WHAT????" Poor Nicci. Actually poor Lorraine! Lorraine is Nicci's mom and I feel like I owe her an apology for contributing to Nicci's shock and probable decision to never give her grandbabies. So sorry Lorraine! I promise from now on I'll only tell her about the fun, happy things so that by the time she's 30 maybe she'll start to change her mind. And Nicci if you're reading this, it's fine, there really only are fun and happy things about pregnancy and babies. The nipple extensions are the worst part and you've already gotten through that so don't worry about it. Lets change the subject....PRESENTS!

I got some lovely presents as well. A very cute summer outfit that will fit her next summer, some onesies that look so tiny I can't believe she'll be that small when she makes her debut, a couple of packs of diapers and a really cute wall plaque that says "The Princess sleeps here"...which of course I'll hang over my side of the bed until August. Oh and I also won a few nipple pads for putting in a good effort at the games. Nicci, don't worry about what those are for.

It was a really nice day! Completely unexpected to because my friend Charlotte is living and working in Germany right now (she's from there) while her husband Vasilis is here taking care of their hotel and she only has 1 week to visit him before she has to go back to Germany again. Her next visit won't be until August so to take the time to get in touch with my friends and organize this was really, really very sweet and very much appreciated.

And now I think I'll take a cold shower...my second of the day...and relax for the evening.