A friend of mine asked me yesterday if I was registered anywhere. No, I'm not. I have a baby wishlist at Amazon. I have a few links here on the blog with neat baby item ideas (if anyone wants to spring for diaper service, I'll name my third child after you). I just... This isn't my first baby. I have some baby stuff. Registering feels like asking for presents. I don't do that. When asked what I wanted for Mother's Day, I asked to sleep in and have a nice breakfast. I'm not good at asking for stuff.
That said, I lost a lot of Alex's stuff in Tropical Storm Irene. My mother's basement flooded. I was mostly freaked out about my books, at the time. I wasn't pregnant and wasn't thinking that far ahead. Yes, we were trying, but I lost books my grandmother gave me. I had donated a lot of Alex's layettes to the Katrina relief efforts. I had maybe a handful of really cute, absolute favorites that I kept - the rest all went to NOLA in September of 2005. I lost that remaining handful in our flood.
I also fear and hope that I won't have a baby shower. Alex's father's family threw me a shower for Alex. It was very sweet, but my mother had no idea about it and felt left out. I would kind of like a shower, if only to have friends come and hug me, but no one wants to come to a shower empty handed and I don't want to ask for stuff, despite the fact that I do indeed need stuff. Bryn knows how I feel about the shower thing. He worries that no one would throw one for me and has offered to figure out how to throw one for me. I told him he was terribly sweet, cried all over him, and told him not to bother.
I'm not sure why, but I feel like baby showers are the sort of thing you do for the first baby. I feel the same way about bridal showers, even though I never had one the first time around. I know the etiquette about not mailing registry cards with wedding cards; it's tacky. I feel the same way about registries in general. But I still want stuff. I still need stuff.
I'm not sure what to do. For the time being, I'll just keep adding to the Amazon list, which has a link in this blog's sidebar and hoping for the best. ...yeah, I'm pretty damned passive.
Have a shower! For a few reasons. One, it has been quite a while since you had Alex and not many people hold on to stuff for that long. Two, it is Bryn's first baby and his family might like to have a shower to celebrate it (as a bonus your Mom could come too :) ). I know people who have had showers for boh reasons and it was nice. I also know people who have had showers for each child just because they wanted to.
ReplyDeleteBryn's mom is in Florida and his sister is in Bellows Falls. Both are about as broke as we are, so even the trip to us is cost prohibitive. The rest of his family is spread out all over the place: Toronto, Michigan... we're pretty alone here. Even our friends are far away now that we're up at UVM.
DeleteI'll revisit the idea in a few weeks, once things are more calm around here. Thanks for the support :)