Shower Power

Yesterday, my best friend from school hosted a baby shower for me. It was so much fun! Coming from someone who generally dislikes showers (well, really just those thrown for me ... I hate opening presents in front of people, especially when I am not giving them something too), that's saying a lot.
The people were a pretty good mix of law school friends, work friends, and old friends. The catering was all courtesy of the boyfriend of the hostess (who is amazingly skilled) plus Sprinkles cupcakes in my favorite flavor (Red Velvet), PJO's favorite flavor (chocolate peanut butter) and everyone's favorite stand-by (chocolate). My mom helped put on the shower, which included a book of pictures from my birth to now with captions, plus some of my writing gems from childhood (I was a very, uh, creative, writer). Everyone had a few laughs at my expense. There was a special blue martini for the guests in Uno's honor and lots of wine and champagne. Everyone decorated onesies with outrageously inappropriate sayings on them. They all wrote a piece of advice on cards for me. Then they all showered Uno with baby gear, adorable clothes and blankets and lots of my favorite children's books.
We have almost everything we registered for now (just a few small things left) and we got a few things that I never even dreamed about. My mom had an antique music box she used for my brothers and I restored and gave it to us, and the music brings back a lot of memories.
It's kind of awesome that we now have pretty much everything we need, but the real benefit of the shower was being able to hang out with that many of my girlfriends at one time. Some of them I see every day, but others I hadn't seen in a long time. And I think it was only better because most of us had never been to a baby shower before. We had a few old pros (especially my mom) who helped run things. The rest of us had a normal party except there happened to be really cute baby stuff everywhere. Plus, there was a novelty in it all for most people, so it seemed like people genuinely enjoyed this glimpse into the world of baby.
I'm glad that I took advantage of my baby shower opportunity and really had a great time! Although I got married and will be having my first child at a young age, I don't feel like I will look back and wish I had waited until I was more mature or better off financially or whatever to do all of this "the right way." PJO and I are incredibly blessed and we're certainly not skimping on anything that we feel is important.