Okay, this title couldn't sum up the past few weeks of my life any better. It's been an insanely busy few weeks and I don't even know which way is up at times anymore. It all started about 3 weeks ago when my husband said, "hey honey, let's clean up the basement"...
So what he meant by that simple comment was that he wanted me to sort through the baby clothes and get rid of the things we would never want to pass on to anyone else and box up the ones that we would be sending to other little ones so that they could get some use out of them too. I knew I had a lot of clothes for my children because my mother in law, sister, and friends enjoyed buying adorable clothes and my mother goes a little extreme when it comes to dressing her grandchildren~ okay, lets face it, the woman has a serious problem... but hey who am I to stand in the way of a grandmother expressing her love?!?! So anyway, I did a very good job of cleaning out my kids' closets. Every time they outgrew a size it all was washed, folded neatly, and packed in a crate (along with a lot of my tears) with a little lable that said for example "Boy 9-12 month winter", and then stacked in our cellar. So when I went downstairs to begin this simple project, I decided it would be best to pull out all of the crates and divide up all the boy clothes then all the girl clothes. So I started pulling crates out~ and kept pulling them out~ and some more ~ and another ~ seriously there's more? ~ How's this possible? 17 crates later I was up to my head it red and blue rubbermade containers. I have to say I was almost embarressed. My children are 3 and 1 and I already have 17 containers of clothing that don't fit them anymore, that is just wrong.
So I sorted into piles, "things that I can get rid of", such as stained or ripped stuff, the not so cute play clothes and things that even I wouldn't put on another baby if I ever had one (which I won't, THANK YOU ROB...) "things other people should borrow", which were all the cute jeans and outfits and coats and expensive items I just couldn't get rid of. And the last pile I liked to call "things I will never allow anyone to borrow EVER but i can't get rid of them" such as their outfits they came home from the hospital in, the "I'm gonna be a big brother" shirts, and a few other random outfits I couldn't possibly part with. I started this process at about 5:00 one evening... and let me tell you, I don't think I cried so hard when my children were actually born as I did looking through these crates. I would pull out a shirt that Sam wore when he learned to walk and I would sob, and then I'd find the little dress we put on Maicey for her first set of pictures and I would have tears running down my face like a faucet. Then Rob and Sam came down to see how I was doing and I pulled out a little newborn onesie that he wore the first time I brought him to the studio to show him off, and Sam says, "mom is that Maicey's doll's clothes", that did it- I just burst into tears and cried like the baby he wasn't anymore. So Rob thought it would be best to take him back upstairs and leave me to weep over the tiny little clothes. Around 11:30 that night I was finally done. See what happens when you listen to your husband?
