23 weeks/Baby Shower Blues

Still growing strong! If you look closely you can see my unfortunate belly overhang!! Ha!

These days I'm thinking back to a time not so long ago when I was ambivalent about a baby shower. I miss those days. My good friend sold it to me as a small gathering of friends that would only occur after 28 weeks, which I was adamant about. When I sat down and made a list of the few close friends I would like to be there, it turned out to be about 30 people O____O...

Then, after visiting with my extended family this past week, the questions I got the most was...When is the shower? followed by Don't forget to let us know when the shower is. Le Sigh.  So now I'm thinking that EH and I can't exclude the family. So all together, including friends, this small gathering has turned into a guest list of 100 people!! 100 people for a baby shower!! Just writing it seems preposterous.

EH and I sat down last week thinking about how in the world we could swing it. I can't expect my good friend to plan a shower for 100 people. That's just ridiculous! So I looked into some cheaper alternatives.

1. Renting space from our local YMCA. We went to a friend's baby shower a few years ago that took place at their local YMCA. The food was catered by a local restaurant. People came and went and it was cool and seemed stress free.

2. Barbeque in the park. This is still my front runner. EH is not as down with this idea because he's concerned about having to rent tables and chairs. I think it's just the easiest stress free thing to do. The food can be catered by a local restaurant. It would be low key. There are some picnic tables included.

3. Rent a hall and get everything included.  This is my least favorite idea because a) I'm cheap and I don't want to spend the money, b) the food in catering halls is always bad and never what anyone wants to eat, including me and c) all the places I've looked at online are either tacky looking, have no parking or are in not so pretty areas.

I'm still mulling these things over but I gotta be honest...I'm a teensy bit upset that I'm having to even think about this at all. What it all boils down to is that I HATE asking for help. It's one of my worst character and spiritual flaws, in my opinion. I continue to believe that things will not be the way I envision them unless I do it myself. That the person I reach out to will drop the ball, the whole thing will fall apart and I'll end up looking like a fool. Partly, this is true but partly I tend to surround myself with some flaky folks who promise a lot but then don't deliver. This continues to be a growing edge for me.