prairie girl transplanted: Boxing Day

I loved baby laundry. No matter how nasty or how stinky, no matter what better-left-unknown fluid had required extra scrubbing this time, no matter how many times I had washed that very same sleeper in the past week - I loved taking a load of baby clothes fresh and warm from the dryer and folding each wee item in readiness for the next round of spit-up.

As time passed, and The Girl grew, her clothes began to take up more space. No longer could I fit her entire wardrobe into one laundry basket, one drawer. I stopped tracking sizes in months and instead moved to the Ts. She stopped outgrowing her clothes weekly and soon I began to see the same shirt for more than two months at a time.

Then The Boy came along, and I started to use some of the wee items again, although only briefly given his propensity towards The Huge. The Girl's gold standard of fashion changed from "blue t-shirt with a picture" to pink shirts with lace (thanks Kinder Korner!) and I started separating the pink from the blue.

And the boxes of outgrown clothing began to fill.

There's something comforting about knowing you've got baby clothes in storage. It means you are Prepared. You may not be pregnant (or even thinking seriously about becoming so), but they're there If You Need Them.

They also mean that you are not Done. It's such an innocent question - "so, you think you guys are Done?" Yet such a complicated answer, one that requires the synching up of both head and heart, of both mother and father.

In my head, I've been Done for a few years now. Emerging battered, bruised, and only marginally sane from the infant years, I realized that my life felt pretty full with the two little people I've got. Full of love, certainly, but also full of about all the Little that I can handle.

Some days, 2 has seemed to be two too many, when I've been feeling particularly self-centered or I've broken up one too many fights about who is hogging the black marker. Some days, 2 has seemed to be two too few, when I've caught sight of those large families on those rare days when everything falls into place and they look like a Hallmark card. But mostly, 2 has seemed just about right, and things have hummed along merrily.

Ah, but my heart. It is easily fooled by the golden glow of remembrance and selectively recalls only those warm moments of holding sleepy, lumpy innocent angels. It dismisses any suggestion that I lack the mental fortitude to add another arrow to my quiver. It assures me that three carseats fit easily into the backseat of a Jetta, that we won't notice a 50% increase in the contributions towards the college funds, and that The Girl and The Boy would welcome and not resent an addition to the family more demanding than even they are.

Worse, it whispers to me that being Done means saying goodbye to my youth. It warns that I will be admitting that I have fulfilled the essential function for which my womanhood was designed, and that all those mysterious monthly processes are now somehow superfluous. It says that hanging a Closed sign on the Baby Shop seals me off forever from those hopes and dreams that, if I am honest, have never disappeared but simply lie dormant.

Now, I recognize the luxury of this position; so many would love to be wrestling with the "To Baby or Not to Baby" question and have both outcomes equally available. For those who have no choice in the matter, their answer might come easily. But despite being content with my choice (most days, anyway), the fact that there is a choice has meant that the boxes of clothes stayed in storage, as I waited for heart and head to be in synch.

On Friday I went through the boxes. I folded the wee items one last time, divided them by size and sex, and boxed them up again with clear labels like "Baby Clothes: Girl (12-18 mos.)" and "Baby Clothes: Boy (18-12 mos.)"

They're coming out of storage, you see.

And they're headed to nieces and nephews who will put them to good use, instead of languishing waiting for the baby that may or may not be.

Am I Done? Probably, possibly, maybe, I don't know. I do know, of course, that just writing this post invites the attention of the Oopsie God. And I also know that, if I do need baby clothes, the Albertville outlet mall is less than an hour away.

Which is as Prepared as I need to be.