My first baby shower

The party-thrower invited my brother-in-law and I to the surprise shower a few hours into our New Year's Eve celebration, so when I remembered the shower a few hours before its start Sunday afternoon, I couldn't recall any other details.

I knew the plan was for my mom to think she was going to lunch, but to really take her to the shower instead. Since I couldn't remember any of the details discussed Wednesday night, I decided to be clever and ask my mom what her plans were for the day. She said lunch with a friend and I nonchalantly asked what time that was.

Armed with the knowledge of when it started, I begin trying to figure out where it was taking place.

I started by asking my brother-in-law, but he could recall as many details as I could. My next thought was to wait until my mom got in the shower and started getting ready and steal her phone to call her friend for directions.

That plan didn't pan out too well, mostly because my mom took her phone into her bedroom or bathroom with her and I didn't want to creep my mom out trying to sneak into her bathroom while she was in the shower.

After a few back-and-forth text, my brother-in-law and I decided since we were guys and were invited while both parties were drinking, that maybe we weren't really expected to be there.

I made one last ditched effort to find out where the shower was being held by asking my twin if she knew where it was. She not only didn't know where it was, she didn't know anything about it until our conversation.

I decided if my sister wasn't going and since my efforts to learn of the secret location weren't successful, that not going was the new plan.

I started to do one of the eighty things I had to do over the weekend but hadn't started yet when a short time later, my sister got a phone call.

"Is that Mom?" I asked her?

"Yes."

"Oh....."

"Get in the car," she told me as she ended the conversation with our mother.

I immediately texted my brother to let him know what had happened so that in the event that his phone rang next, he could decide weather or not he wanted to answer it.

As I walked though the front door of the lady's home the shower was in, I couldn't help but notice I was the only guy there. I wondered how many man laws I was braking by being there. Probably more than once since I had left the Vikings-Eagles playoff game to attend the baby shower.

My mom's friend had my twin and I sit on either side of our mom while the three of us opened the many gifts her friends had bought for our younger sister and my soon-to-be niece. My sister stayed in touch with the mommy-to-be who is in Hawaii via text messaged as we opened the gifts on her behalf.

Opening these gifts was like getting a crash course in Baby 101. I learned so many baby terms and I followed every other gift with the same question: "What's this?"

There's a reason guys don't go to baby showers.

One of the most popular items seemed to be baby clothes. Baby Ryann Leigh made out like a bandit when it came to new outfits. She's not even born yet but I'm pretty sure she has a cooler wardrobe than I do. As one of the three of us would pull a new outfit from the gift bag, all the women in the room would go "aww, that's so cute." Every. Single. Time. For some reason, all the outfits started to look the same to me after the third one.

Halfway though the shower, I realized that my mom (and even her friends) and my other two sisters have bought my sister things to get ready for having her first baby, but that I hadn't gotten her anything yet. I realized it wasn't because I've been out of the country for most of the last six weeks or that I can't afford to so, but it's because I don't have a clue what babies, or their mommies, need. I'm going to have to talk to my sister and see what she needs that she doesn't already have and get it there pretty soon.