A job I’ve been putting off for many months at the very least, is sorting through the extremely large pile of kiddies clothes we have collected over the last 6 years. They were mostly sorted out before we moved, but BB of course has been through a lot of them since then, and there were a lot that had got mixed up during that time, or SB has been through since we moved.
But one, it was raining today so couldn’t work outside, two, I want to take some down for my cousins baby. So I bit the bullet. It has taken me literally hours, though bar some putting into bags, and a heap of socks and odd gloves etc. it is all sorted now.
I’m not especially attached to kiddies clothes etc. , but a few items I just couldn’t put in the passing on pile. One of them was a cardigan knitted by my Aunty Barbara when SB was baby She has suffered with dreadful polymyalgia for some years now – she had it then when SB was little, though nowhere so bad as now, and there was still hope they would be able to treat it successfully. It must have been an effort for to have knitted this cardigan.
But most of all for me is a little fleecy oversuit, hat and blanket set that we bought for SB before she was born. Seen here being worn by BB at our first Melrose in Feb 2005:
I can remember buying it, we’d gone out a couple of months before she was due to Mothercare for a big shop for stuff (odd in instself now, surely we’d do it online now?). They had this little set, it looked so cute, we succumbed to buying it (we didn’t buy many clothes for her, got given loads). The blanket at least, was used to when SB came home from hospital – it was cold, it’s been snowing, she was so wrapped up you could hardly see a baby :-). I can remember taking her out dressed up in it to our favourite park in Leeds. I can’t part with it yet – soppy and daft I know.
I think it in some way sums up all that excitement and anticipation of planning for the approaching birth of your first child, and those first few month with the new baby. And the memories of those happy times.
I’ve got a few little bits stashed away. Still haven’t quite got over my annoyance at C’s sister for losing a hat – the first baby thing I ever bought, when I was only a few weeks pregnant with Violet. My fault for lending it out, I suppose.
I had better also look at the passing on bag! A few clothes knitted by now deceased rellies, and some that i just loved…
Notice that i couldn’t do it
Yeah, I have a couple of items still from each child. I have gotten rid of some bits a few years later down the line, or been able to give them away to someone else’s baby I cared about rather than just getting shot of them.
We still have their first ever outfits kept – both bought before they were born. D’s was a tiny babygrow in cream with little hedgehogs on it from Mothercare which we bought along with stuff like baby bedding, bath and pushchair in big shop like you just described. S’s was a pink Piglet babygrow which I recall putting on the radiator to warm up while in labour with her so it would be snuggly when she was born.
I seem to be able to cope with handing most things on to friends and relations (though to be honest, most stuff is pretty worn out after 4 girls) but there is at least a crate of things that won’t be going anywhere. My special thing is a little white fleece jacket and a stripy footless babygro, the first things we bought. Seems hard to believe we were ever childless and excited about the first now. Such a long time in so many ways.
for some reason there ahve been no clothes that I couldn’t part with, they are all gone now. What I can’t bear to part with is (no laughing) the baby sleeping bags and nappies!
hmm, so I have just wailed over a worse for wear cheap purple velour jumper – but I really remember SB in it. it was one of her favourites
I saw this thread and was going to comment in my usual heartless manner that I hadn’t kept any baby stuff and wasn’t attached to it at all. I did keep one little cardigan (that I knitted, no less! a very rare occurence!) for a while but thought i’d charity shopped it the last time we moved house – but yesterday I found it stowed away neatly in a bag in the attic. I must be more sentimental than I thought
ROFL I just regret the passing of time. that time when SB was young and I was part time was rather a fab time for me. Its that that I think of rather than the clothes per se.