Carolyn Creative

Going to a baby shower. You headed my way?

Yesterday, my friend Andi and I road tripped to Chapel Hill for Chelcy’s baby shower.  Andi cleverly hijacked her mother’s convertible and, two Chic-Fil-A original sandwich combos later, we were off.  The drive to Carrboro was splendiferous, accompanied by the vivid bright and orange trees lining the highway, solid conversation ranging from my recent nuptials to the Real Housewives of Atlanta, and a jaunty playlist peppered with favorite Brit-pop classics from our high school years.

Ordinarily, baby showers make me a little fidgety.  I’m not immobilized, but a little spacey.  I consider it the appropriate response for a semi-single gal who has yet to “shit a pumpkin” as one shower-goer described childbirth yesterday.  However, Chelcy, a down-to-earth librarian from Boone with a Jackie O fetish helped put us at ease.

“I hope your baby is cute,” I said.  ”So we don’t have to be polite and awkward.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Chelcy said.  ”Fred and I were pretty ugly babies.”

I was delighted by the entertainment at the shower.  There was a quiz matching celebrities with baby names, which Andi and I were extremely cocky about at first, but were instantly humbled.  I missed Sylvester Stallone — his child is Sage Moonblood — and apparently, Erykah Badu named a baby Puma Rose.  And in another activity, we got to draw on plain white onesies, which was fun, except my vision of drawing Fred and Chelcy’s baby in a yoga pose was thwarted by my lack of skills with the special fabric pens.  So it goes.

We chowed down on three kinds of hummus, artichoke and spinach dip, pasta salad, and a punch of Lifesaver rainbow sherbet and ginger ale.

“Don’t repeat this,” Chelcy said, biting into a cupcake with pink icing and a blue jellybean in the center, “but this is what happens when you don’t go with a mix.”

I never said my baby likes turtles.

All in all, it was a peaceful afternoon.  Although my maternal instincts still slumber, it warms the heart to think there is so much love waiting for this little creature.  Perhaps the baby won’t realize the practicality of my gift of Diaper Champ, but I’d like to think I’m contributing to a smell-free nursery.  As Andi and I gathered our coats and walked to the car, we admired a large Obama portrait in Chelcy’s neighbor’s lawn that actually resembled Denzel Washington.  Another baby showered.  Time for dinner.