showered with books

My coworkers are the best. Yesterday, they showered me (almost literally) with copies of their favorite childhood books — a complete, but wonderful, surprise! I knew they were throwing me a shower, but I wasn't expecting it to feel so meaningful and personal. Or to go home with a library of reading material for our baby.

My cubicle-neighbor Julie engineered the plan. The thing is, I've always thought a children's book shower would be fun, but I'd never mentioned it to anyone at work. Julie came up with it on her own after hearing me say one day that I look forward to reading to our baby. What a great sense she has for people! Apparently, my coworkers have been coming in and handing her their books right under my nose. They have to pass me to get to her, so people were smuggling them in under their shirts, in nondescript bags, etc. I had no idea. (Julie: "I've been feeling rather sneaky the past two weeks!")

The shower was at The Liffey, an Irish pub-style restaurant in St. Paul, which was a nice touch for a lover of things Irish, even if I was unable to have a Guinness. The books were stacked in a very nice Combi rocker/bouncer, which vibrates when you push one of the buttons. (That's a nice gift, too!) People also wrote down their best parenting advice, which I slid into the pages of a cute photo album and read aloud when they all were collected.

Steve and I had a good time looking at the books last night. There are classics we remember — The Giving Tree, Fun With Dick and Jane, The Lorax, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day — and some I hadn't seen before. Inside the covers, each person had written a note to Steve and me, telling us what the book had meant to them when they were children, or how much they enjoyed reading it to their babies. It was really moving.

I have typically dreaded baby showers for a number of reasons. Silly games, large groups of women sitting around chattering and watching one woman open gifts — not my thing. And for women struggling with infertility, it can be incredibly tough to sit through the seas of baby-themed wrapping paper, decorations, baby talk, etc. But I have to say, the two showers that have given for Steve and me have felt very nice for us — probably because the people throwing them know us and love us enough to tailor them to our tastes. Fairly low-key, no "guess the household product inside this diaper" games, and the dads are as welcome as the moms. What nice ways to celebrate this much-loved, much-wanted baby!