Baby Shower Season
In light of the previous mentioned baby boom we have found ourselves invited to a couple of baby showers recently. Now let me be clear, baby showers are not traditionally our thing: eating cake while sniffing brown stuff in nappies and trying to figure out if Kim Kardashian’s strained face is in fact from a more recent labour photo or a screen shot from that video that made the Kardashian’s who they are today, really isn’t my idea of an afternoon out, even if there is Prosecco on offer. But alas, we love our friends and family, and celebrating their milestones is something we do love, in whichever form it may take.
Gift buying is also difficult for us: when you're failing at TTC, even the strongest of us has a trigger; for me it’s baby clothes. I feel if I allow myself to wander up THAT isle, I will get carried away in my own fantasy of which cute outfit I would buy for my own baby. It’s a dangerous head-space to be in so we try to avoid it at all costs. So naturally, this mindset posed a dilemma for us when shopping for baby shower gifts! That was until I discovered milestone wine labels! Absolutely brilliant! A bit quirky, poignant and let's be fair, who doesn't love wine - right?
With the first baby shower of the year looming ever closer, we ordered the labels, printed them off and then - my favourite part - went wine shopping. We carefully selected 4 bottles of decent wine that we knew our friend would appreciate, painstakingly soaked the existing labels off and then meticulously applied the new labels! They looked pretty awesome even if I do say so myself. Now the issue with giving 4 bottles of wine as a gift is how to package them, no one has yet brought out a bottle bag for more that 1 bottle of wine (there is an opportunity there Clintons, take note). So my wife suggested we acquire a wine carrier from Sainsbury's, titivate it up a bit and, voila, problem solved!
So that’s where we found ourselves pre baby-shower: in the car park over the road from the trendy avocado-serving pub on the outskirts of Leeds, wine adorned with labels proudly in hand and ready to hand over to the mother to be!
As we parked the car, my wife had bumped into a friend of our friend we recognised from the hen-do and was chatting away so I dutifully reached in to the boot and pulled out our very original, very quirky gift. Before we entered the aforementioned trendy public house, there was a built main road to navigate. I looked right, looked left and began to cross. Rookie mistake. Clearly the excitement of gifting wine had made my brain totally devoid of the green cross code: look right, look left, look right again...
Halfway across the road, I noticed a white Mini coming towards me - fast. The rest happened in slow motion: I started to run (ok, ok I started to jog), my right hand momentarily left the bottom of the wine carrier and was now just swinging freely in my left hand. As I quickened the pace to avoid being run over by the white Mini, the inevitable happened. Gravity took control; the bottom of the wine carrier gave way and all 4 bottles crashed, in a most dramatic fashion, to the curb, just as I reached the safety of the pavement at the other side of the road! Disaster! My wife, as always, saw the funny side, “Well you’ve done it now, Gem! We’ve gone from being the bitter baron lesbians with the quirky gift, to the bitter baron lesbians with no gift!"
Luckily, this particular friend saw then funny side and actually thanked me for, what is known in our circle, as the gift of another 'Gemma story'. Our empty wine box took pride of place on her Instagram photo presenting the gifts from the shower.
Fast-forward to one month later and a little wiser, we had our second baby shower to attend. Once again, we carefully chose the wine, soaked off the labels and replaced them with our milestone ones. Learning from our previous mistake, we bought a large gift box, loads of tissue paper and a few muslims to pad it out.
20 minutes later, the majority of the gift was assembled and I was just wrapping the last bottle of wine in tissue paper (extra reinforcement), when... well I’m not even sure you could make this up... the bottle started rolling the other way. My wife looked at me, I looked at my wife - "Oh God! Not again!" she whispered, as we both lurched forward to save the bottle but it was too late. Smash! All over the kitchen floor! To make matters worse it was also all over the gift box anBaby shower seasond it’s contents. Now I don’t think I would even be happy about my baby being swaddled in a red wine-soaked muslim, even if it was a decent Chateau!
The only thing we managed to salvage from that little episode was 3 bottles of wine and a dribble bib.
Alas, we survived the shower season with our dignity (almost) intact and I am pleased to say all babies have now arrived happy and healthy and to the new mummy who didn’t get a gift from us - I’m sorry! To the mummy who just got three bottles of wine, please know it should of been more!
Gift buying is also difficult for us: when you're failing at TTC, even the strongest of us has a trigger; for me it’s baby clothes. I feel if I allow myself to wander up THAT isle, I will get carried away in my own fantasy of which cute outfit I would buy for my own baby. It’s a dangerous head-space to be in so we try to avoid it at all costs. So naturally, this mindset posed a dilemma for us when shopping for baby shower gifts! That was until I discovered milestone wine labels! Absolutely brilliant! A bit quirky, poignant and let's be fair, who doesn't love wine - right? So that’s where we found ourselves pre baby-shower: in the car park over the road from the trendy avocado-serving pub on the outskirts of Leeds, wine adorned with labels proudly in hand and ready to hand over to the mother to be!
As we parked the car, my wife had bumped into a friend of our friend we recognised from the hen-do and was chatting away so I dutifully reached in to the boot and pulled out our very original, very quirky gift. Before we entered the aforementioned trendy public house, there was a built main road to navigate. I looked right, looked left and began to cross. Rookie mistake. Clearly the excitement of gifting wine had made my brain totally devoid of the green cross code: look right, look left, look right again...
Luckily, this particular friend saw then funny side and actually thanked me for, what is known in our circle, as the gift of another 'Gemma story'. Our empty wine box took pride of place on her Instagram photo presenting the gifts from the shower.
Fast-forward to one month later and a little wiser, we had our second baby shower to attend. Once again, we carefully chose the wine, soaked off the labels and replaced them with our milestone ones. Learning from our previous mistake, we bought a large gift box, loads of tissue paper and a few muslims to pad it out.
20 minutes later, the majority of the gift was assembled and I was just wrapping the last bottle of wine in tissue paper (extra reinforcement), when... well I’m not even sure you could make this up... the bottle started rolling the other way. My wife looked at me, I looked at my wife - "Oh God! Not again!" she whispered, as we both lurched forward to save the bottle but it was too late. Smash! All over the kitchen floor! To make matters worse it was also all over the gift box anBaby shower seasond it’s contents. Now I don’t think I would even be happy about my baby being swaddled in a red wine-soaked muslim, even if it was a decent Chateau! The only thing we managed to salvage from that little episode was 3 bottles of wine and a dribble bib.
Alas, we survived the shower season with our dignity (almost) intact and I am pleased to say all babies have now arrived happy and healthy and to the new mummy who didn’t get a gift from us - I’m sorry! To the mummy who just got three bottles of wine, please know it should of been more!
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