Yesterday afternoon, some ladies from church got together to celebrate the pregnancies of three people in our church who are having babies in December — me, Karen and Karen. It’s the third child for one Karen and the fourth for the other Karen and me, so it’s a bit odd to have a baby shower. However, the organisers were glad to have an event to plan around, and it was really just an excuse for silly games and yummy food.

When we arrived, we were each given two clothes-pins to peg onto our clothes (and warned not to put them in a vulnerable area, so I pulled mine off my earrings). If someone mentioned the word “baby” or “shower”, whoever was closest could remove one of their pegs and wear it as a trophy. At the end of the afternoon, whoever had collected the most pegs was the winner. (This was the only game I won. I am the master of my tongue!)

For most of the baby shower we just sat around chatting, trying not to say the words "baby" or "shower" lest we lose our pegs.

Other games included trying to guess the ingredients in bowls of baby food, pin the baby onto the belly (a variation on pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey), fill-in-the-blank nursery rhymes and guess-what-chocolate-bar-is-in-this-nappy.

By looking closely at the contents of the nappies, you had to name the brand of chocolate bar. As the chocolate bars had been melted down in the microwave, it was a bit harder than it may sound. And, of course, there was the gross/yum conflict happening in one's head while trying to analyse the contents!

The organiser was so enthusiastic, it was hard not to get sucked into the games. Really, it was a good afternoon out, and it gave me a chance to catch up with some of the ladies who I haven’t spoken to properly for a while.

I was remiss in forgetting to take a photo of the three, fine pregnant ladies together. So hopefully I’ll remember to do it at church next week.