Baby Shower!

I went to my Uncle Oscar and Aunt Ditas’ house yesterday for the baby shower of my cousin. The party was hosted by my cousin’s older sister and parents. When I first received the invitation a couple of months ago, I immediately posted on my cousin’s Facebook wall, my congratulations to her and her husband about the pregnancy. Only about a day later did I realize that I might have made a mistake. Maybe they didn’t want to announce it to everyone and by posting it on Facebook, I might have broken a secret. I quickly deleted it and sent my cousin an email apologizing for my lack of judgment. She assured me that it was okay and I was able to breath a sigh of relief, whew!

When I came to the U.S. years ago, Kristine was just 3 or 4 years old and I lived in their house for a few months before I moved to my own apartment, so I practically saw her grow up from grade school, high school, college, then marriage to a wonderful man named Howard who is originally from Louisiana. And now they are blessed with the upcoming arrival of their first child. I don’t know if you remember this Kristine, but in the first couple of days while I was living at your parent’s house, your dad was teaching me how to drive and you were seated at the back seat before child safety seats were mandated. We were on the way home from a holiday party and as we neared your house, I inadvertently braked hard and you fell forward and hit your mouth against the front seat, which hurt you and caused your gums to bleed. I was mortified because you were crying and I thought that I broke your teeth. Luckily, the bleeding stopped and so did your tears. So just to warn you, when your baby is growing up, never let me drive a car with her in it.

At the party, my cousin Mary Ann, who is Kristine’s sister made an interesting table centerpiece in the shape of a three tiered cake made out of diapers. How creative! I got to see relatives whom I haven’t seen in months because we live far from each other even though it is within the Southern California area. There was Jeanette who lives in Thousand Oaks with her husband Ike (he couldn’t make it because he was babysitting the grandkids). I told her that Jon and Kate Plus Eight had nothing on her family because she was one of nine children. I used to live with them in U.P. Village for a couple of years when I was in college, so there was my Uncle and Aunt, the 9 children, plus 3 other relatives (including me) in the household. Ed lives in L.A. while his sister Beth and her daughter, son-in-law and two grandkids recently moved to Murrieta from Long Beach. Cousin Edwin, his wife Danielle and three kids live in Santa Ana.

After having lunch consisting of Chick-Fil-A nuggets, sandwiches and wraps, plus pancit, lumpia shanghai, steak, key lime pie, fruit tart, ambrosia and a huge cake, Mary Ann started some games. The first one was guessing the girth of Kristine’s belly using knitting yarn. We all took our estimates, cut the yarn to the size of our guesses then at the end compared it to Kristine’s actual belly size. Needless to say, I didn’t even come close, but Danielle, her with the three sons, came within an inch and won. The next game was word scramble consisting of words relating to pregnancy and having a baby. Out of 25 words, the winner came up with 16 correct answers. Trying to be a smartass, I announced that I got 26 words correctly. Another game was trying to pick the most number of tiny safety pins out of a big bowl of uncooked rice while blindfolded, within one minute. The winner was able to get 6 safety pins. I tried this game much later and was amazed at how difficult it was. If I only knew, I would have brought a magnet. There were other games that followed but I went inside to talk to relatives who were trying to guess the sex of the baby based on the shape of Kristine’s belly, the width of her shoulders, or if she was beaming or not. I didn’t even hazard a guess for I don’t know anything about it. While all these were going on, I managed to tease my Uncle who has been relearning to use the internet, not to forget to attach a postage stamp whenever he sends an email.

Later in the evening, I asked Kristine and Howard for the three of us to pose for a picture and asked for their permission to write a blog about the party and post the picture, which fortunately they consented to. If not, this entry would have never been written. Thank you very much Kristine and Howard, for your graciousness. May you be blessed with your new baby.