Baby, you got game

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Reader Ally writes, "Help! I'm the hostess of a baby shower in a few weeks, and I need some game ideas. Any info you can provide would be greatly appreciated."

Baby showers can be tough to plan. There are a lot of games out there, but you first need to assess your guests to determine which ones are right for your party. Some people break out in hives at the thought of shower games, while others would be bored without them.

Once you figure out just how showery your group is, you can then plan the types of activities you do. Here are some ideas, depending on the type of shower:

• Full-on thunder shower: Stage silly competitions like blind taste-testing baby food and unscrambling word jumbles out of baby essentials like "bottle," "safety pin" and “bassinet." Use string to guess how big the mom’s belly is, or create trivia quizzes or celebrity games like "Match the famous mother and offspring" (Who's Sean Preston Federline's mommy? Anyone?). And there's always the clothing pin game -- give everyone five pins and take away one every time he or she says "baby," "boy," or "girl."
• Scattered showers: Participation-optional activities keep your guests in their comfort zones while still providing lots of fun at your party. Some ideas: Create a crafting station with paints and decorative stamps that guests can use to decorate Onesies for the baby. Or leave out a stack of diapers and markers so guests can write funny messages for the parents to read when they’re knee-deep in diapers.
• Blue skies: Skip the games in favor of something low-key, like creating an interactive gift for the new parents. Commemorate the special occasion with keepsakes for the new arrival, such as a personalized photo album. Take a photo of each guest with the parent(s)-to-be, glue them into a book, and ask the guest to write a special message to the baby. Or create a guest book where each guest shares a favorite memory with the parents so the baby can one day read about how crazy Mom and Dad used to be.

Just make sure to keep it light and fun. And most importantly: Save time for cake and opening presents!

Your turn! What baby shower games do you love (or loathe)?

Comments

For a co-ed shower game for the guys, we put beer in the 4oz bottles and had the guys line up in a contest to see who could empty the bottle fastest using the nipple. One guy chewed the nipple to make the hole bigger...another one just unscrewed the nipple and drank from the bottle. It was so funny to watch and we got some great pictures..(of course you can use juice or milk instead of beer!)

Maybe for games, you could do something having to do with baby names and their meanings. Or, give each person a pin and a list of baby-related words they can't say; you lose a pin to whomever hears you say a word and the person with the most pins wins.

I much prefer intimate gatherings to be full of sentiment (such as photographs, scrapbooks, and letters) and good food (why not go with pickle-and-ice-cream concotions?).

Decorative t's for baby
Purchase packages of onesies and puff paints. Have a separate station and let guests decorate the baby t's. Make sure to put a paper bag in the middle so the wet paint does not cause front and back to stick together.

Group Competition
Put 4-5 people in a group and have them list as many songs as they can think of that have baby in the title. Only give them 1-2 minutes. If someone outside the group has never heard of the song, someone in group has to sing it.

Diaper Change
Use a doll, preferably one that cries. Blindfold guests and see how fast they can change a diaper. This is particularly fun at co-ed showers.

I call this the baby advice game. Instruct each guest to write baby advice on a blank note card then their name on the back. Read each card and have the mother to be guess
who wrote the advice. It's lots of fun and the mother to be will get some great advice.
After the shower, she can keep the notecards

Good luck

I am not a baby shower attender lover, however one of the best and most loved by every lady there was a game where you microwave 1/2 a doz. different miniature chocolate bars in #'d teeny tiny diapers & the pass them around. The gals open them, smell them & then write down the # of the diaper & what they thought the candy bar was. It's gross but a crack up! Very unique.

To help the mother out, I ask for everyone to bring diapers. They will then be put in a raffle to receive a nice gift like tickets to a football game, etc.

Also, I like the poopie diaper game. You need about five diapers and five different types of candy bars, snickers, hershey's, etc. You melt the candy bars and spread on the diaper. The guest have decide which candy bar is on each diaper. No clues would be given. The one with the most right wins a prize.

I am not big on shower games period. My husband and I threw our own shower in Oct and did not play any games however we had 70 people + 20 kids! If I had to play a game though, it would be pin the blue rattle/pink bow on the baby (a blown up ultasound pic is pretty cool). I played guess how the the belly is at work. Mom measures herself with a piece of string & cuts to length. Everybody passes the ball of string around and cuts the length they think will fit around mom's belly. Closest to mom's wins.

Reader Melantha just sent us this great game suggestion:

One of the games we played that was a big hit was "Oh Baby What's That Song". We played snippets of songs with the word "baby" in the chorus or verses. The guests had to guess the correct title and artist. The winner(s) received a copy of the CD with all the songs that were played.

Thanks, Melantha!

Decorating onesies is a great idea. Another idea is to have guests decorate white or solid colored baby socks. Those little babies are always losing their socks, so you know the mom-to-be will certainly use them!

You could also have guests decorate some plain brown hat boxes. These would be great for storage and you could decorate them with colors and items from the nursery theme.

A hilarious game I played at a shower was to make an outfit for a stuffed teddy bear. We were divided into 4 teams and given supplies and a time limit. We had to craft an outfit for our "baby" using only the supplies we were given. The mom-to-be had to choose the cutest outfit. It was great and everyone really enjoyed it.