Tuesday, September 18, 2007

When I was pregnant with my son, my sis in law gave me about 4 boxes of newborn to 24 month clothes from her boys. Now that I am figuring out what to do with his room I had to decide what to do with this stuff. My mom offered to store all the bedding, clothes etc in their crawl space and I knew there was no point storing all these used clothes (that went through 2 boys).

So I went through the boxes last night to make sure there wasn't anything gender neutral. The Epilepsy Foundation comes by about every other month and takes away unwanted stuff. They are coming today so I needed to get the stuff on the curb. I am not attached to this stuff either way. I pulled out a few things, just in case. I went back up to to room and decided to start making piles of what I can keep for this baby and what should be packed away. I have a few special outfits that were just his that I have kept. But, the rest of this stuff....I can't.

Well, in his closet is outfit after outfit. Very boy. Very blue. And there, on the other side of the closet is two tiny pink outfits my husband hung up after we found out our next baby will be a girl. The rest of the girl clothes I have shoved in the downstairs closet but hub got something from his parents and hung it up. It looked *so* out of place. I have a closet organizer that is blue, blue crib sheets, blue shoes, blue hats, blue boppy, outfit after outfit... and then these two tiny pink outfits. It was really really weird.So I started making piles and remembering. The turtle outfit one friend sent, the turtle outfits another sent, the stuff another sent, the "future golfer" outfit I got at my shower, this cute outfit I bought off of someone on ebay, tiny little shoes, hats, bibs, so many onesies...seriously, a lot of those. One that said "I love my mommy". The on clearance Christmas outfits we bought in Christmas of 05. Before we ever knew he was a boy. It struck me that all of this stuff would have been packed away by now anyway. None of it would have fit anymore. He never got to outgrow this stuff. A lot of it (well the bigger stuff) still had the tags hanging off of it. I have to undo this room that never got lived in. It all looks so much the same. Time stood still in this room. I turned on the swing to see if the batteries had held up for 16 months. I unpacked my diaper bag, 16+ months after I packed it. I forgot the stuff I shoved in there. The tiny pacifiers, the blankets, the hats...

I know preparing and redecorating that room is the healthy thing. I know packing this stuff away doesn't erase him, or his memory... I know this is just "stuff". I know the room will be really cute all done up for this one.But it was really cute before, too.