Kids do the darndest things!
Just when you think you’ve seen all the funny things kids do, and heard all the humorous anecdotes of things they say out of the blue or at exactly the wrong time, along comes a kid who takes the… It was a Saturday in July when my best friend Leslie had her baby shower. Her mother and her sister were coordinating a lovely shower to be held during lunchtime in the private party room of a nearby Italian restaurant. With about 40 women-only invitees, the joint was soon to be jumping. As guests arrived, gifts were placed in a lonely corner of the room. With the 40 women who attended it seemed as if there were mountains of gifts. All I could think was, “Great! We are going to have to wait and sit through Leslie opening all these gifts.” I was hoping that they would get started as soon as possible.
One of the guests brought her two year old son, Tyler, with her. He was the only little boy in this room full of women gabbing on endlessly. He was adorable! Everyone was looking at Tyler for entertainment as he was walking around and exploring the party room. We were all laughing and talking, playing the games that were provided to us. One of the games provided for after lunch was the famous “Baby Shower Bingo.” For those of you who are not familiar, you get a blank bingo board page, then your job is to guess what the expectant mother is to receive as gifts and put them in the boxes in whatever order you desire. As I was filling this out, I wondered to myself, “What won’t she receive?” There are so many gifts in there she will probably even get hair spray.
After everyone ate, Leslie’s mom announced that we would watch the mother-to-be open the presents and we would now play Baby Shower Bingo. We each had these items that looked like coins with the expectant mother’s picture on one side and the expectant father on the other side. They were the markers we were supposed to use to indicate each of our items as they were called. As we played bingo, we noticed that Tyler had disappeared. His mother, Andrea, was asking everyone if they had seen him. No one was sure if he was being mischievous and simply hiding underneath a table or sleeping in an isolated area. Everyone stopped what they were doing to look for Tyler. Finally, after the wave of initial panic and excitement had passed, someone realized that Tyler was on the other side of the mountain of gifts and he had opened many of the gifts on his own. He must have thought it was Christmas in July! While other guests said they should give him his own bingo card, I thought, “What a relief. He helped her open about a quarter of the gifts she had received. So now she doesn’t have to take her sweet time opening them all and showing them around the room to all of her guests!”
Everyone laughed once Tyler was found, and we all had a great time for the remainder of the shower. As you might expect, in addition to the unexpected entertainment, we were given a gift of our own as we said our goodbyes – personalized glass mugs provided by Favor Favor Baby (with me as the go-between!) that said, “LESLIE’S BABY SHOWER.” This was a very memorable shower not just because of the favors we took home with us, but also because of Tyler stealing the show with his antics. After all, children are the reason we celebrate these showers, so now Leslie knew what to expect!
