Showered With Reality



Peace!



You often hear people talk about how things are “getting real”. This typically occurs far too long into a situation that is completely irreversible at the point at which they utter those words.

So, I won’t say that Sunday’s baby shower in Orlando (Clermont, actually, but you wouldn’t have known the difference) make things “real”, but it certainly helped drive home the fact that we are woefully unprepared to bring a pooping, splattering mess into the world. How sad does that sound?

Okay, not woefully. But unprepared nonetheless.

This thought was compounded by the fact that not only did we have to Vaseline most of the gifts just to get them into the bed of the truck. And the cab. And under the seats. And anywhere else we could find that would fit onesies, binkys and the DIAPER GENIE!! Woo hoo!!

As if the first compoundment wasn’t enough, it was doubly compounded when we got home and started stacking it neatly (with the help of Barb and Marty) in what will be the nursery, if only because we have failed miserably at buying a house to this point. Granted, the stuff is still in boxes and the room won’t exactly qualify as the next wing for the Taj Mahal, but the baby shower haul took up about ¼ of the room. And that’s without the cool crib not being constructed yet.

What happens when a Babies R Us explodes. Or...what we call the nursery

It’s amazing how much stuff a thing that can’t even hold its own head up and whose main goal in life is to dirty as many diapers and throw up as many different colors as she can in the course of one day, actually needs.  

For one thing, her nickname is going to be Tina Turner because of the large amount of clothes she now owns, even though she is minus-7 weeks old. I saw Tina Turner in concert on back-to-back nights in 1993 and witnessed a total of 427 costume changes. Baby R will be able to come darned close to that if she is to wear all the clothes she has right now.

That said, the more clothes, the better. Until we get a real house with a washer and a dryer, I plan on piling those dirty little clothes up and washing them all at once. It takes a lot of I Love Mommy onesies to make a whole load of laundry, by the way.

There are also strollers, Jump and Jives, play saucers, diapers, diaper traveling things, bags, socks (which are actually called booties, who knew?) and little cute baby shoes.

In all truthiness, we are sooooo blessed and grateful to have friends and family that would go shopping (during the holiday shopping season, many of them) and provide us with enough gifts to almost not fit in my truck. That is amazing.

I just hope that everyone who has added to the pile in the nursery (and those of you who still might...) knows they are also on the hook for one day's worth of baby sitting while I play golf. Or fish.

So, it’s getting real around the Readling house right now. And I have a feeling it’s going to get more real this weekend when I have to move everything into storage and clear room in the baby’s room for the actual baby.

Can someone please move this piece of placenta? I can't see the camera!