Kate Middleton hands out shamrocks on St. Patricks Day and reveals that’s she’s hoping for a boy

See Kate Middleton’s outfit up close »

Handing out sprigs of shamrock to soldiers and meeting an adorable seven-month-old Irish wolfhound seems like a perfectly good way to spend St. Patrick’s Day and that’s exactly what the Duchess of Cambridge was up to yesterday.

Kate first took on the royal role of handing out shamrocks to the Irish Guards at Aldershot last year and by all accounts this may be a new annual event for the Duchess. And like most royal traditions, there’s a fine piece of jewellery that comes with the job: the three-leaf gold shamrock brooch Kate wore for the ceremony actually belongs to the Irish Guard. (It’s also been worn by the Queen Mother—who participated in the shamrock ceremony from 1964 onward—and Princess Anne.)

In keeping with the emerald-green theme of the day, Kate chose to wear the same green Emilia Wickstead coat as last year, though slightly altered for her growing royal baby bump. (Just look at the pictures of Kate Middleton from St.Patrick’s Day 2012 to see the difference in neck and waistline. Hi, little grape!) She paired the coat with emerald earrings, a Sylvia Fletcher for Lock & Co hat, a black turtleneck and her black Cornelia James gloves, as well as her suede Episode shoes—which made headlines when one became stuck in a metal grate. Needless to say: we’ve all been there and likely handled the situation with much less grace than our darling Duchess did.

And finally, some new royal baby news! One Irish Guardsman spoke to Kate after the ceremony and, of course, reported back to the Daily Mail about their conversation: “I asked her, ‘Do you know if it’s a girl or a boy?’ and she said, ‘Not yet’. She said, ‘I’d like to have a boy and William would like a girl’. That’s always the way. I asked her if she had any names and she said no.”

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