I suppose we have the same rule about color. I have taken thousands of photographs of my son in the first three years of his life and I decided early on that I didn’t want to look at him dressed in the same color in photo after photo. I was never worried about people knowing his gender either. In fact I still get angry about the gender wars. We were at a birthday party where the mom handed out different colored favors. My son asked for a purple one, (his favorite color), and we got quite a few looks from other parents about his selection. Really, he was two!!!

I completely understand why you wouldn’t hold a baby shower, but you might want to consider creating a baby registry if you haven’t already. You may have family members or friends who want to buy and ship you something. Although we had a shower I received a number of gifts from friends of my parents or coworkers who wanted to buy us something. Those gifts were all surprises to us! Secondly, registries offer completion discounts of 10% on items you may need to purchase yourself. That in and of itself is a nice perk!

Yeah I suppose you don’t see a ton of gender neutral colors b/c of this strong propensity for blueing/pinking. I don’t really care whether strangers know if I’ve got a boy or a girl in tow, so it doesn’t bother me to dress LB in any color. My rule is: no more than 15% of any color. 🙂

We did choose not to have a real shower for a few reasons. Travel/expense: I didn’t want to travel for one and it’d be hugely selfish (IMO) to ask dozens of friends to travel for a shower. A baby shower just doesn’t warrant a cross country flight or trip upstate, I don’t think. So I was made that decision for the potential guests. Also, the only people who offered to organize one were out of state friends and relatives, in-state (immediate) family were only maybe interested in attending, but not helping. So that felt like it would have been way too much work for the organizers.
We just celebrated our wedding reception last year, 2 yrs after the fact, we couldn’t really justify having another big ‘do to ourselves.

A relative was *really* still wanting to organize something, though, so we worked out a compromise of an-almost shower that I may share in a future blog post.

I can’t guarantee you’ll receive more practical gifts, but in my experience it does make a HUGE difference in the gifts you’ll receive.

I think you’ll have a hard time keeping it a secret once you know the gender though 🙂 I don’t know anyone who found out and kept it a secret. It seems once you find out you want to share that news with the world 🙂

I think the mindset of guests definitely makes a difference. I tend to think practically, because I would want practical gifts. If your friends are similar in nature or know that you aren’t the frilly, pink dress kind of mom, then you will probably end up with more functional items.

I also wouldn’t care if my son slept in pink sheets, but I know many parents who would. In fact, for most of his first two years he rode around in a pink, flowered car seat. That option was so much cheaper than the basic black version which other than the color was actually the same.

I’m not a fan of stuffed animals. I think they are little dust magnets. My son has a giant box of them and I actually had to ask people to stop buying them for him. I didn’t receive too many at the shower, but somehow they multiplied overnight!

I’m curious. Did you purposefully decide against having a shower? I considered not having one, but my husband arranged it without my knowing. I must admit I felt so much love from the people who attended.

I rarely have trouble distinguishing gender, but now I wonder if it has to do with the clothes the parents pick out. I suppose I don’t see too many very young infants out and about wearing gender neutral colors. Maybe the clothes give it away and I just never thought about it. Like you I always thought you could kind of just tell the difference.

By the way I love that you are picking out gender neutral clothes even though you know the gender!

That’s interesting. I never dressed my son in particularly boyish outfits, but in his three years on this earth only one person has ever mistaken him for a girl. I never thought of women using pink as a way to demonstrate gender. I just always thought moms liked pink for little girls.

Thanks for the comment. It’s interesting to see a similar pattern in the baby showers you attended. It’s funny that someone would think children two years apart could be twins. By your comment I’m guessing they aren’t of similar size. Do they at least look alike?

I attended a baby shower yesterday for twin girls that also leaned practical. It’s possible that my group of friends just leans that way, though, instead of towards the frilly side of things.

Our friends had twins (1 boy, 1 girl) and I both agree and disagree with Emily – I could easily tell them apart even as newborns but PiC had a little trouble with it. I can’t remember if they even dressed them in pink or boy but just looking at their faces, I thought it was clear which was which. Might not be so obvious when you don’t have a set containing one of each to compare though. 😉