Baby Shower

My cousin’s daughter is having her second child in January. She has a three year old son and is expecting a daughter this time.

Let me preface this before I don my shawl and bifocals and settle into the recliner with an afghan on my lap and a hat on my head to cover my thinning hair and keep my pale, age-spotted scalp warm. Preface: I know that every baby is a celebration. My first pregnancy and the birth of my first child was no more amazing and wonderful than my second pregnancy and the birth of my second daughter.

That said…this cousin (first cousin once removed if you want to be technical, and you know how I feel about technicalities) threw herself a baby shower.

She is threw herself a baby shower.

She sent out the invitations and she hosted this party. Sure, she asked her grandma to provide the food because why would she put her pregnant self out to buy shit and cook/prepare food? Several of her grandma’s sisters (my mom and aunts) provided decorations and even more food.

I feel so crotchety but this makes me crazy. It feels like a demand for presents. She sent invitations out with instructions as to where she’d registered. She sent several social media reminders over the past month or so. I just…

Okay, so yes, she moved up here in the last few months from Mississippi. Apparently, she gave her older sister all her baby gear because she wasn’t sure she’d have any more. She’s twenty three years old and already has one child. The odds of her not having another child were pretty slim.

But, since she gave all the stuff she’d used for her son away, she needs more stuff, new stuff, PINK STUFF if you will.

So she threw herself a baby shower.

I don’t get the gall.

I mean, she has a mother (who really is kind of useless, just saying) and a grandmother. She has a sister. She has friends. She couldn’t go to any one of those people and gently suggest, or hell, just outright ASK one of them to throw her the shower? That would just feel so much better, less like she feels entitled to presents from everyone.

Is this a generational thing? Am I officially an old biddy?

It just feels so icky. And yet, I feel bad that it feels icky, like I’m the one being weird about all of this rather than the entire situation being weird and I’m just responding to the weirdness with weirdness of my own.

Sigh.

But of course I went to this shower. And I took a gift. The gift was a box of diapers because I’m awful like that.