First off, everyone needs to wear deoderant. No ifs, ands, or buts, because this space is tight.

But it worked.

Secondly, just order pizza and be done with it. Don’t try to get fancy with hand-rolled sushi this time around. You’ll end up deciding to make and eat a wasabi bomb and hope that it explodes so you don’t have to finish rolling one more roll.

Deoderant, check. Pizza, check. Here’s the calm before the storm.

And here’s the storm. The fun storm, the funny storm, the comfortable-I-feel-like-we’ve-known-these-couples-for-a-long-time storm.

You remember this storm.. from our reunion a month ago?

Before leaving the reunion we suggested that we have a game night. So the Shack was offered up as the first meeting point and accepted.

They arrived on a rainy cold night and we ushered them in to park their car seats. 5 babies, under 5 months.

A couple that was unable to make it to the reunion came as well. Little did we know that all the stars were aligned for them to possibly not make it to game night: a baby that strongly dislikes being in her car seat, not knowing how to get to our place, and no internet connection to figure out how to get to our place.

As luck would have it, they walked out of a coffee shop and saw our midwife across the street who gave them directions.

Yay! Here they are. I wish I had their baby girl’s hair:

And here’s the rest of the crew. Cozying up in our single-wide. You see that baby at 10 o’clock.

He weighs over 20 lbs. Guess how old he is.

3 flipping months.

That’s the mama that had him in 90 minutes in her living room. From first contraction to out-comes-baby. Let’s all take a moment of silence.

Another tidbit for housing a bigger group than normal? Open up every nook and cranny for use. With having 5 babies in the place, it really didn’t feel chaotic. Some people went into the guest room to nurse, others laid their baby in our room to nap. It seemed to work out.

Sweet little S. He and Ruth napped together in her room. Gone are the days (already!) that we can lay little miss rolly-poly on the middle of the bed. What a difference a few months makes.

In between nursings and naps, we did manage to play a game.

Catchphrase – Girls vs Boys

Which I still think was uneven because none of us women can remember our last name, let alone guess Pad Thai in 5 seconds. At one point, one mama stopped talking in the middle of a conversation. Two minutes later I asked, What were we just talking about? 

I don’t know, she said. Literally, only 2 minutes had elapsed. It’s nice to be around others that understand.

So, even though we were at a disadvantage, and even though we lost….

…it was still a blast.

Look at little C in the green shirt.

He reminds me of a older man, shrunk down in size.

We’ve already agreed on the next location for game night. One of the mamas said she had asked our midwife if any other class kept in touch afterwards, and was disappointed to find out that yes, some other classes have. I’ll ask her again in 5 years, she said.

I hope we’ll still be playing games 5 years from now. Maybe by then I’ll be able to remember my name.