Playing dress up

My mom saved two outfits for me as a baby: a sweater set my grandma knitted me, and a blue dress from a local boutique. Ironically, this boutique is still there, I have shopped in it a few times and it’s where both outfits came for when Chris told me each time we were having a girl. Olivia wore both outfits around three months old and Emelia was four months.

Emelia, a lot freer with her smiles, was way more excited to wear these than her sister. These outfits are precious to me because there are only two of them.

I literally put them on for a photoshoot and then back they went into a box. Each time I’ve washed them, I’m worried something will happen (they’re 34 years old after all), but so far so good. I plan on boxing these away for them assuming A) they have kids and B) they have a girl, but somehow it worked out for me and seriously, what else can I do with them? Tossing them is blasphemy now. And it’s a good reminder for me to be conscious of the clothing I keep for the girls that they each wore.

When I was sitting down with Olivia’s clothes deciding what to keep for a potential second baby girl and what to sell to make money for a potential next child, I initially kept a lot. But then reason came to me, and I knew I needed to sell off these clothes for money for another transfer, and besides, I had photo proof they wore them.

I kept some special things and lo and behold another girl popped out. So now going through these baby clothes again is a second punch in the gut. We were blessed with a ton of hand-me-down baby clothes from someone at Olivia’s daycare which supplied me for Emelia, but dressing her in the clothes Olivia wore…it brings back so much. And once again I found myself setting aside clothing when I was going through clothes for the spring consignment…for what? For a third baby girl that isn’t going to come?

I went back and forth, and in the end told myself this: I was given two of my baby outfits. Had I gotten a box, it would have been fun dressing my girls in them, but it wouldn’t have meant the same. So I said to myself, Self, why are you keeping these? I had photos. I had the memories. So I marked them to sell.

I kept both of their pink girl outfits for their gender reveal (excuse me, sex reveal), I kept the two outfits each wore in the hospital and then home, and I kept the onesies Celina made for Olivia (that Emelia eventually wore too) for our Texas transfer with her.

The only thing of Emelia’s that I do regret selling (and it did sell so it’s gone now) is the newborn sleeper I went out to buy her when she came home from the NICU because I didn’t have enough newborn sleepers for how tiny she was compared to Olivia. There was a moment when I hesitated putting the sleeper out on the rack at the sale set up and I wish I would have kept that one.

But I made $350 at this last sale. I’ve made over $2,800 in a total of eight sales. It’s both sad and freeing purging the baby stuff. And I have the things I really cherish. What’s more, at the risk of sounding cliche, I have my babies. Clothes are clothes, right? This money I made at the last sale is for our yearly family vacation. No more is it going towards treatments.

So that’s how I’m looking at it, purging the stuff and making the memories out of it.