Big thanks to Sears Canada once again for sponsoring this post.
Mary started to wriggle out of her restraints and climb out her high chair around 18 months. The seat belt adjusting mechanism was crusted into place from two kids’ worth of dried on crud. I tried to keep her in it. She kept climbing out. I’d turn around to tend to something on the stove and she’d be standing on her highchair tray. She finally started hang dropping to the floor and taking off in whichever direction she pleased.
“She’s done here, ” I said one day.
Mary had been sitting up on a kitchen chair between her brother and sister for a few days now and she was fine. She barely ever fell off. So I picked up the five-year-old, $30 highchair and headed for the front door.
“What are you doing?” asked Ed.
“Bringing this to the curb. We’re done with it.”
” . . . ”
“What? Why are you looking at me like that? She won’t sit in it anymore, right?”
“It’s just … I don’t … I’m not emotionally ready to get rid of Mary’s high chair.”
Oh, cry me a freaking river. I opened the door and ran the chair to the curb. It was gone by the next morning. Cross that off my list!
* * *
What’s in this box, I thought? I was pretending to be serious about tackling the teetering tower of crap in the corner of my bedroom. I opened it up and found some infant clothes I hadn’t yet passed on to anyone in with the mix. Aw. I felt my heart melting and my ovaries starting to do somersaults.
There was also a box of cloth diapers, a baby carrier and assorted infant rattles and chew toys. Some of it I’d been carefully putting away and taking out when needed for over seven years. I picked up the round plastic rattle with a shimmery, crinkly butterfly attached to it that we used to call “Chicco” because that’s the name printed on it. It was one of Colum’s first toys. I unfolded the pale pink sundress with a print of babies on it that my mom got for Irene and that Mary also wore. And, oh look, it was the pure-wool, knit fuschia diaper cover [as pictured crumpled up above] that I custom ordered for Mary in a fit of “I won’t mind hand-washing my baby’s diaper covers” insanity.
All of it brought back a flood of memories. Bits and pieces of my heart were tied to those things. Could I just stick them back in the closet again? Not really. No.
It’s so strange, so bitter-sweet, not to be holding onto these things anymore. At the same time that I’m overjoyed to be rid of the clunkier, more eye-sore-inducing accouterments of infancy — I’m looking at you playpen — I’m torn to pieces about all the bitty little clothes, afraid they will whisk away my precious memories with them.
But of course they won’t. Not as long as I have a small selection of hundreds of thousands of digital photos to wade through anyway.
BUT SOME OF YOU ARE STILL MAKING YOUR MEMORIES. So I’d be remiss if I didn’t let you in on the sweet Baby Days sale Sears is having from January 17 to 30. Almost everything in the Baby Room including furniture, baby gear, accessories and more is 15% off. Plus there will be sweet discounts on baby clothing as well.
Go check it out! Really, if you have any baby gift-giving occasion coming up at all (and don’t we always?), now’s the time to shop for it. I’ll be browsing the newborn section online if anybody needs me, treating my own baby angst with a little retail therapy.
Disclosure: I am part of the Sears Mom Ambassador program with Mom Central Canada and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own.
One reply on “Those were the days, my friend. We thought they’d never end.”
I recently went through totes upon totes of kid clothes…I found that the smaller the clothes got, the harder it was for me to let them go…sigh. And I can relate to your husband…it took me 5 years before I was willing to part with the crib. To this day, my husband instructs anyone we know who has a baby, to NOT let me hold it under any circumstances out of fear that I will want another.