Smooches or ‘Staches?

Puckered-up pink lips, mustaches, pie, and balloons.  What do these things have in common?  Not a whole lot until you put them together for a gender reveal celebration.

With our first two babies we decided not to find out their gender.  What we did find out is that people have strong opinions about this.  For instance, it drove my sisters crazy!  However, my sister-in-law loved it and had done the same thing.  Our rationale at the time was that there are very few good surprises in life.

Usually it goes — Surprise! The hot water heater is broken.  Or — Surprise!  Your car needs four new tires to pass inspection.  Am I right?!

Very rarely are there surprises in life that are greeted with great joy and tears of happiness.  We wanted THAT kind of surprise so we chose to wait until the delivery room.

And then came Baby Mountain Three.  For those of you who know or read the story here, you’re aware that this baby’s very existence was a HUGE surprise of its own.  For that reason, I wasn’t messing around this time.  Enough with the surprises.  I was finding out the gender of this baby.  I needed to plan, P-L-A-N, plan where everyone and everything was going to go in our then two-bedroom house.  {Yes, 2 bedrooms.  5 people.  You do the math.} That being said, I wanted the moment we found out to be special in its own way.  Not that finding out in the sonogram room and sharing that moment Dan wouldn’t have been special — there had just been SUCH anticipation with the girls’ births that I didn’t want Baby Mountain #3 to feel left out.

So on Thanksgiving 2012, we had a little gender reveal celebration with our family.

Out came the lips, mustaches, balloons, and pie.  What?

Here’s how it went.  We had the sonogram technician write down the gender of the baby on two pieces of paper and seal them in two different envelopes.

The first envelope went to our local farm market, Soergel Orchards.  They make delicious pies and it was my job to bring dessert to Thanksgiving.  When I called to place our pumpkin pie order I also asked them to box up a raspberry pie if it was a girl (I was going for pink) and a blueberry pie if it was a boy…you get the idea.  When it came time to check-out the berry pie was on the house.  How sweet!  Thank you, Soergel’s!  You rock!  When we brought the pies home my mom-in-law and sister-in-law were caught unabashedly sniffing the pie box for clues.  Stinkers. 😉

My hubby delivered the other envelope and a ginormous box to our grocery store — the only place with balloons that would be open on a holiday!  They filled the box with helium balloons of the appropriate color and sealed it tightly.

On Thanksgiving morning we made everyone guess which it would be — boy or girl?  Because c’mon — what’s more fun than carrying around one of these guys?

Team ‘Stache chose to sport jaunty little mustaches to the big reveal.  Team Smooch picked oh-so-sweet lips to represent their guess.  It was a pretty even split.

Outside we went!  Thank you, crazy western PA weather, for sunshine and 50 degree temps in November.  Drumroll please…  We wrestled the lid of the ridonkulous box open…

…and out popped BLUE balloons!

Gah!  Such a fun moment!  There were shrieks and hugs.  There was laughter and lots of joy.  My nephews were even heard shouting, “We won!  We won!”  There were lots of tears — grandmas and aunts crying happily and Eva sobbing because she wanted a girl.  Hahaha!  At one point my brother-in-law ran into the house.  He came back out  yelling, “The pie is raspberry!  The pie is raspberry!”  Always the jokester. 🙂

Eventually we calmed down and dried our tears.  We assured Eva that she could keep her set of pink lips even though it was a boy {this was the real reason for her tears we had come to find out}.  Then we went inside to eat delicious BLUEberry pie.

It was a great moment shared with those we love on a day full of thanksgiving.

No matter when you find out, no matter how you find out, no matter a smooch or a ‘stache, I hope every parent experiences that gender reveal moment to the fullest.

So, how did YOU find out?!