Baby Shower!

Dig that beautiful cake! On Saturday my mom hosted a baby shower for us and invited future colleagues, quite the variety of friends (some going as far back as 6th grade and some we'd only met months ago), and family. My friend Leslie and Steve's parents George and Sue win the "longest travel distance" award, having come out all the way from California just to be here, and our friend Yook even consented to come up from Brooklyn as a surprise guest for Steve (what party is complete without at least one surprise guest? Or at least that appears to be my family's motto!).

As you can see from this photo (which doesn't show the two strollers, the "exercise jungle," the bouncer, or the car seats we also received), we got a *ton* of things off our registry, which we are so excited about, as well as some really sweet surprises -- apparently we invited a handful of crafty people, so we got two hand-made blankets, and a hand made sweater, hat, and quilt that were just beautiful. We still have a few things left to pick up but the guests were more than generous in helping contribute!
Several guests also brought babies so we got to see the range of development:

In this photo, the boy on the chair is 2 years old, the baby in the bouncer is 3 months old, the baby in Allie's lap is 10 months old, and there was another4 week old baby who slept quietly for its entire stay in the one air-conditioned room (let's hope we're that lucky!). All the babies were really well behaved and happy, giving us some welcome confirmation that we are in for as much fun and love as we are sleepless nights and poopy diapers. Speaking of which, we're going to use cloth diapers, and Allie and Pete were kind enough to give us some lessons in how to use them, so we got a practical education as well (thanks guys!).
These are two very happy campers (shown with our gift-distributing helper):

Thanks again everyone!