The Ultimate Big Easy Baby Shower

So “The Family Way” released on the 18^th! I’m so excited about this short story! I love plays on words and let’s face it, with Nell it’s always about family and FAMILY (the mob). So the title totally makes me smile.

Here are the details about the story:

Alex and Nell are expecting! 

At Nell’s baby shower, she’s hoping for a ceasefire between the law-enforcing Bakers and her criminal cousins (not to mention her scary grandmother, the mob doyenne). 

The girls just want to have fun, but when the silly shower games are interrupted by some unexpected guests, it takes the “fun” right out of this dysfunctional family shower. 

Can Baby Baker help these families inch closer to neutral ground and begin to heal old wounds and fractured friendships?  

Download this Big Uneasy short story today!

And now let’s get the party (the baby shower) started!

You receive an invitation decorated in green, gold and purple, announcing New To the Krewe. So, you go to the NOLA baby shower, and are greeted by a banner of letters in Mardi Gras colors that says, We Got The Baby, hanging from the ceiling. Behind it is a garland of cut out paper shapes of bibs, bottles, rattles, carriages, Mardi Gras masks, and fleur-de-lis.

The hostess hands you a tiny plastic baby, the kind that goes in a king cake. She says, “It’s for the Don’t Say Baby Game. If you say baby, someone can take it from you and you can take someone’s baby if they say it. The person with most babies at the end of the shower wins. So, don’t say baby.”

You clutch the tiny doll as you hand the hostess your gift, which you’ve wrapped in pastel colored paper decorated with tiny fleur-de-lis.  

The mother-to-be begins unwrapping her presents. The first one is for bringing baby home from the hospital—a gorgeous layette, with monogrammed bib and burp cloth embroidered with a stork carrying a bundle with a fleur-de-lis on it and the words—Brand New Orleanian.

You say, “Oh, the baby will love that.”

The lady next to you takes your baby. Wow, you’ve lost the first game already. 

The mom to be unwraps the second gift handed to her. Surprise! It’s a Who Dat Baby book to note down baby’s family tree on the ‘Who’s Ya Mama and Dem?’ page. And also to record baby’s first: king cake, red beans, crawfish, football game, and Madi Gras festival.

The next gift the NOLA mama unwraps is an outfit Baby can wear to their first football game. It’s a onesie with a football and the slogan Cutest Saint’s Fan embroidered on it, along with black and white saddle design pre-walker baby shoes with a gold fleur-de-lis emblem on the side.  

You can’t have too many bibs, so the Big Easy mom is happy to see the next gift is a bib decorated with crawfish and the words—Baby’s First Boil.

You also can never have too many onesies, which is what’s inside the next gift the mama tears open—a onesie with a graphic of a round open cake with a purple, green, and gold icing and the words—My parents found me in a King Cake.

Speaking of cake, it’s time to serve the two-tier New Orleans Saints cake with gold and black icing decorated with fleur-de-lis emblems and footballs, and a sleeping baby on top, whose bottom faces up. The words on the back of the diaper say, Who’s Dat Baby.

While everyone is eating cake, it’s time to play baby charades. We’re all divided into two teams. You’re up first. You pull a card out of the basket with the word crying on it. You got this. You ball up your fist, hold them to your eyes, and wiggle them as you say, “ wah, wha, wha.”

“One of your teammates yells out, “A baby crying.”

They got it. So, you sit down, and they take your place in the game. They act out the phrase ‘nursing a baby’. It goes on like that with everyone laughing and having fun acting out and guessing phrases like teething, water breaking, and giving birth. 

Next, we all play Hot Baby, using a baby doll instead of a potato.  

Then, for the last game, we bob for binkies, like bobbing for apples, but with pacifiers instead. 

Before we all say goodbye, the hostess gives the woman with the most tiny plastic babies a scented candle as a prize. Maybe she’ll save one of the babies to put into her King Cake come Mardi Gras time. 

I will confess that I’m not a huge fan of baby showers—particularly my own when I had them. But I might have fun at a Big Easy baby shower. How about you?

Perilously yours,

Pauline

P.S. Don’t forget to check out The Family Way today!