Baby Shower

A baby shower is not a tradition where I come from. In our culture, the girl is taken from her husband's house to her mom's house in the 8th month of pregnancy. There's a small function where the elders of the house come together, put some gold on the girl, have food and leave. But nothing like a baby shower. So obviously there is no one who would organize such a function for me. The first time around I pestered my husband till he said "Hun, I will give you some money. Why don't you organize your own baby shower?" And thats how it happened when I was pregnant with Mehreen. This time around, I was talking to my colleague Surina and mentioned that I didn't think a baby shower was on the cards because I was so tired and just couldn't be bothered. "why are you organizing your baby shower?" she asked. "Let me do it for you." And she, along with another colleague Feyaza, decided to organize the party.

We drew up a list of people to invite and divided the tasks between ourselves- Surina would do the decorations, Feyaza would do the games and I had to take care of the food. It was to be a tea party on a Friday (which is a weekend in this part of the world) evening.

At 2:30 on Friday June 1st Feyaza and Surina reached home, with bag and baggage.



They wrapped the gifts, prepared the games, decorated the house and set the scene.



At 4:20 our first guests came. As soon as everyone walked in, they were given bracelets. The rule was: No one could say the word baby. If any one said it, the person who catches them saying it would get their bracelet.



And at 6pm whoever had the maximum number of bracelets would win. The game produced some high volume squeals and volleys of laughter throughout the evening as everyone tried to outdo the others. I think it was the most closely contested game. Someone even asked "what's Justin Bieber's first single's name? I seem to have forgotten"



Malak won the game with her sharp ears...next time I want to know who said what, I know who to go to :)

One of the other things I got the guests to do was pick a letter out of a box.



With the letter they got, they had to write a message and draw a picture for the baby. For example, if they got A, they had to write A for apple and draw a picture (Shruthi got the letter A and she wrote A for acrobatics which the baby has been doing inside my tummy. It was my personal favorite. And oh also R for Romeo and Y is for yes which you have to say to mummy all the time).



I hope to compile it into a book which the baby can read once it starts learning the alphabets :)

The next game was finding the "treasure".



A bunch of safety pins and buttons were hidden in a pile of pulses and the contestants had to close their eyes and pick out the treasure. A safety pin was worth 5 points and button worth 10 points.



The game was played in batches of 3 and the winners had a final face off with Nyla winning the game.




Then we had some fun with baby food. Bottles of baby food were covered in colorful wrapping paper.


Everyone had to taste it and guess the flavors. Even my mom couldn't resist playing this game.



But the winner was Surina who got all four- vanilla custard, peach and apple, mixed veggies and porridge- right.



I wonder how much of her food Kayla (Surina's daughter) actually gets to eat :D

Then came my favorite game. I had specifically asked for this game to be included because it was so much fun. We froze little Jelly babies in ice cubes and gave them to the guests.


They had to break the babies free from the ice cube and whoever got them out first had to scream "My water has broke".



Some tried to suck the ice out while others twirled it in their cups. Still others ran to the balcony to melt the ice.



But no one could outdo Shruthi who just bit into the ice and freed the poor little jelly baby.




And of course no baby shower game can be complete without a "Predict the gender game". Everyone picked up the color they thought most appropriate for my baby.



At the end the number of blues exceeded the number of pinks but then hey, it was the same for my first baby shower :)

Our last game was the sipper cup game. We gave two sipper cups full of coke to Christine and Tina. They had to finish the drink in the shortest possible time.



I think the picture clearly tells that it's two people we have definitely put off coke for a very very long time. Tine won the game, by the way.

We rounded off the evening with some tea and snacks. It had been one of the most enjoyable evenings. And I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Of course all credit goes to Feyaza and Surina for not just such planning the lovely event but executing it so well that after the weekend everyone came back talking about how much they had enjoyed themselves. And I have some lovely pics, videos and of course gifts


which I can show my baby when s/he comes out and say "we had so much fun at your expense."
Tina summed up very aptly what the evening had taught her "It must be so hard to be a baby. They have to eat such yucky tasting baby food and drink out of such difficult sipper cups. Poor things."





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