Showertime!

So, our baby shower was yesterday!

It was a great time, though I suppose I would have enjoyed it a little more if I hadn't been quite so exhausted from staying up late the night before to finish putting together the crib. It's worth it though; there's a certain pride of ownership that comes from having built it myself. Even if it is a pretty steep down from my grandfather's days, when he would actually go into the forest, track a tree back to its lair, shoot it, and drag it back home to do whatever it is you do to turn a tree into furniture. 

No, all I had to worry about was a set of needlessly dense instructions (Step One: Insert tab A into slot B. Step Two: Do literally everything else) and an absolute mis-labeling of every single piece of hardware it came with. 

Anyway, the shower was great; the cake had a squid on it, which is significant if you know that the giant squid is my spirit animal. It had a storybook theme, so instead of cards folks brought a copy of their favorite book growing up and wrote a little inscription. So Donovan has an instant library, which is good because I'm probably going to spend about 78% of my time reading to him. Between everyone who came we got a good mix of old classics I remember from my childhood as well as more titles that will be just as new to me as they will be to Donovan.

The theme extended to the décor, with classic storybook covers framed around the room (and even the cover of my own first novel, Soapy Animals, among them! Although, just to clarify, it is very much not a children's story) and little bags of gummy "bookworms" on every table. When Donovan finally shows up in a few weeks, he'll be well-equipped to begin a lifelong love of literature!

It was great seeing everyone, and we got just about everything we needed, especially onesies. We got so many onesies, they probably add up to about a fifty-sevensie! (That counts as your dad joke of the day, by the way.) Of particular note was the little tiny Hawaiian shirt my mother got for him, an almost perfect match for one of mine, and the set of baby sandals with a pair of baby white socks. (I make no apologies for my love of this particular footwear combination, and it's nice to know that even before he learns to walk my son will quite literally be following in my footsteps.)

Anyway, I've been thinking about my own father a lot lately, naturally, and one of my earliest memories from when I was a real little kid is watching some of his favorite movies – which would, of course, go on to be some of mine. Enemy Mine, The Big Chill, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Man, I loved watching those Nazi faces melting off! 

At the time, I just thought he wanted to watch some awesome movies and I just happened to be there so I watched them too, and over the years I never even thought to question that assumption. But as I get closer and closer to having my own son I realize that he was, in fact, sharing his favorite movies with me – he wanted me to see them. I know it seems so obvious in retrospect, but when I think about it I start to consider all the things I want to share with Donovan, eventually.

So I'm starting a new semi-regular feature in this blog, which I'm calling, "A list of some of the things I want to share with my son, eventually, when he gets old enough for each of them." (I'm not very good with titles.) I don't even mean just movies, or books, but experiences that I think should be universal across childhood.

The other day when I was taking the pup for a walk I saw an enormous woolly bear caterpillar crawling across the driveway. It put me in mind of my youth, catching woolly bears in the tall grasses just outside the greenhouse, building a nest for them in a glass jar using twigs and leaves, watching it build a cocoon and then rushing home every day from school to see if it had emerged. And then, that bittersweet joy of seeing it as a moth and setting it free.

Okay that's it! See you next week!