Celebration of New Life

On Sunday, I was honored to have several of my friends help celebrate the birth of Princess #4 by hosting a "Sip 'n See". I love the idea of this pseudo-shower, since traditionally it's considered bad etiquette to have a shower for any baby other than the first. Really that "rule" totally annoys me since EVERY child brought into the world should be celebrated. So when I heard about sip 'n sees, I knew for sure that I wanted one for my babe-to-be.

Basically a sip 'n see is a shower that's held AFTER the baby is born. Gifts are not required, it's just an opportunity for people to come and have tea/punch/finger foods and ooh and ahh over the baby. Sort of a "coming out" party for the baby if you will. We scheduled ours for about 3.5 weeks after Princess #4's due date, not knowing for sure when she would arrive. It ended up being perfect timing due to the traumatic nature of her birth and my difficult recovery (more on that later). I needed that much time to feel up to going anywhere and so our sip 'n see truly was her "coming out" (Ok, so she did make it to Target once earlier in the week, but we didn't see anyone we knew!).

Can I just tell you how blown away I was by the whole thing? My lovely Southern Belle of a friend Katherine, hosted it in her home. If you ever want to be inspired to be creative, check out her blog: Once Upon a Twig (and see pics of the sip 'n see there!). I personally think she could give Martha Stewart a run for her money. The attention she gave to the tiniest details was amazing. I'm now totally feeling like I need to do more in my home and thanks to Katherine's little best kept secret ( I swear I won't tell Katherine!), I'm thinking I need to start trying antiquing.

In addition to the beautiful decorations we had an amazing cake and other yummy food provided by several other important people in my life. And as if that weren't enough, there were gifts to open (a nice surprise) and a money tree to help us out with buying a double stroller ( a necessity I'm discovering with 2 under 2).

I really HATE being the center of attention. Which is funny since in my younger days I LOVED theater and spent most of my time on stage. But when it's unscripted, I tend to feel uncomfortable in the spotlight. But I left on Sunday feeling so loved and appreciated. I really struggled during my pregnancy with feeling like people viewed the arrival of our fourth princess as no big deal. She was, afterall, our fourth child and fourth girl to boot! I mean, surely we had everything we needed and shouldn't expect too much following her birth, right? I was pretty hurt by some comments that I probably shouldn't have even bothered to think about twice. But the sip 'n see changed that. Our little Princess #4 was celebrated in a way every child should be. And I'm truly grateful.