I’m at an age now where I get excited about people around me having babies—blame those adorable hooded bath towels. I want to see all the pictures (even the blurry, out of focus ones) and hear all the banal stories, so when the bib I gave a coworker as a gift for their new baby was snubbed in favor of a knitted bib someone else offered, I felt like gathering up my ovaries and empty womb and crying in the corner.
I just died.
Back in fall someone on my team at the office became a first-time parent. I didn’t show that person how happy I was for them because that would’ve been creepy (we’re not friends friends), but I was pretty excited in an, “Aw, how wonderful you! Thanks for giving me a logical justification for updating the Word document in which I list all my favorite baby names so I don’t forget them” way. As stoked as I was about finally sorting out my feelings about the name “Finn,” I was perhaps the most excited about commandeering the team’s group gift for the baby shower.
I don’t brag about very many things: I know that my cooking is average, that my yoga form could be improved (by actually doing yoga regularly), and that my hair only looks cute 18% of the time, but I am an excellent gift giver. When a special occasion comes around, I never fail to put together a thoughtful, heartfelt, appropriate gift. This was my first coworker baby at this job, so I knew this was my chance to rise to the occasion and make a name for myself at the office without going above in beyond with my actual work.
With the baby’s due fast approaching, I came up with a really clever idea to order a personalized onesie and bib from Cafepress. The onesie would feature our company’s logo in a baby-fied font, and the bib would have a little joke relevant to the work we do. It was office-related and cute without getting overly sentimental for for a coworker. I had put thought into this gift, and I’ve been told that’s what counts.
Weeks, perhaps months, before the office baby shower, one of my coworkers gave the soon-to-be parent a knitted green bib with a purple dinosaur in the center.
I have to hand it to her: the knitter has serious skills. She knit a fucking brontosaurus on a bib in a different color for crying out loud. I can’t even imagine how that’s feasible. She even has an Etsy shop for her knitting (something I learned via eavesdropping), so you know she’s totally legit.
Before you call me a hater for critiquing this bib, know that I did not feel threatened by this unexpected, homemade bib. I thought it was pretty (ugly). It was really well made, and the knitter is totally within her rights to toss another gift on the baby bounty.
…But is a knit bib really practical? Do mushy carrots come out of yarn? Won’t it be itchy? I mean, if someone gave my spawn a knit bib, I’d also expect they kick in some Johnson & Johnson baby lotion just in case. And why a brontosaurus? What if our coworker wants the first dinosaur his child ever sees to be a T-Rex? Am I the only person who’s considered what dinosaur she wants her child to see first? (Stegosaurus.) Imagine having the nerve to make a brontosaurus assumption on a knit bib! She may as well have knit an explanation of where babies come from.
Not to mention, the bib she knitted pales in comparison to some of the other baby gifts people on Pinterest have knitted or crocheted:
Oh my goodness.
…Maybe I was a little threatened by the knit bib.
The baby shower came around and my gifts were very well received. The bib even garnered the elusive universal office chuckle. I left the baby shower feeling satisfied with my gift offering, but that all went to shit the other day when my coworker mentioned the dinosaur bib to the knitter.
“Did I tell you we used your bib you made the other day? I’ll have to send you a picture.”
Prior to overhearing this conversation (put a roof and a door on my cubicle, and maybe I’ll mind my own business), I never had any expectation that I should actually see the baby using/wearing my gifts. Once the gift is given, the exchange is complete.
But why is the knitter getting adorable baby pictures, and I’m getting bupkis?
Perhaps the onesie I ordered was still a little big for the baby, and the bib also seemed a bit large when it arrived–but the more that’s covered, the better, right? The only logical explanation I could discern was that because the knit bib was made by hand, my coworker deemed it fitting to bestow a precious picture upon the knitter. …Or the coworker with the new baby hates me, in part because I’m such an awesome gift giver.
I tried to put it out of my mind and do some actual work. Maybe because it was technically a group gift (even though it was made clear I was the mastermind behind it) the coworker feared that sending a picture to our entire team would be necessary to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings. Maybe the bib has already been used so much it’s stained beyond recognition, and my coworker is too embarrassed to share photographic evidence of the sweet cherub’s spittle! There was no telling for what reason I was pictureless, and it didn’t make sense to dwell on some stinkin’ baby I’ll never meet, anyway.
“AWWW. That’s so cute!”
I was this close to reaching nirvana about the whole situation, but the knitter’s cooing brought my forehead vein right back out. WHERE WAS MY PICTURE!? NOBODY PUTS MY BABY BIB IN A CORNER!
Because this knitter knitted a presumptuous brontosaurus bib, that means she’s entitled to a special picture of the kid? So what if she made it herself! What’s the big deal? It’s not as if she taught herself how to knit solely to make a bib for our coworker. Now that would’ve been thoughtful and picture-worthy–but no, she knits all the time! Knitting is practically her other job. Her gift was lazy and convenient! I had to register for Cafepress! I used Photoshop in the creation of my gift! I DOWNLOADED A SPECIAL FONT ONTO MY COMPUTER. A font that makes letters out of baby bottles is in my computer now! I entered my credit card number into a website and that necessitates a lot more risk than her wretched dino bib. Out of the kindness of my heart, I took a chance on becoming a victim of identity theft just to get a nice gift!
I recognize that the homemade gift was sweet and took time, but new parents shouldn’t be using exclusive pictures of their baby to make gift givers feel inferior. I used my hard-earned money to fund my gift, and I refuse to concede that my ingenious bib is lesser than several feet of yarn merely because I didn’t put it together myself. My bib may not have had a brontosaurus, but it had a subtle tenderness that the knitter’s stupid dinosaur could never symbolize.
Have any of your gifts ever been snubbed because they weren’t homemade? What dinosaur do/did you want your child to first become acquainted with?
