I recently gave a bag of Vivian’s hand-me-downs to a co-worker for his baby daughter.

I am a pack rat and find it freeing to get these clothes out of our jammed drawers.

We are done with the clothes, they were cute, she outgrew them, I have pictures of her in the favorites (that haven’t been printed)

It is nice to know another baby will wear them parents appreciate the free updated wardrobe, just like we appreciated all of the hand-me-downs we received.

The continuing cycle of paying it forward.

But… there is still a pang in letting them go.

I stood there and held up each piece and told him the story of when she wore it, which dresses were in heavy rotation, which one’s made her blue eyes even bluer, which were the coziest.

As I held a bitty pair of pants up and danced them in front of him I said

“Someday you’ll look back at these little leggings and won’t believe she was ever this tiny…”

He just stared blankly back at me.

Okay, so maybe he won’t.

But I know his wife appreciates the clothes as much as I do…

_____________________________

I have kept the really special handmade booties, bonnets and blankets and some special pieces of clothing given to us by relatives.

But you just can’t keep everything and I wanted to pass along this idea for you crafty types.

My very creative co-worker Judy who has the best ideas - (see vintage posts about what to do with everyone’s photo Christmas cards and Christmas tree trunks) told me what she did with her very favorite baby clothes.

She made a patchwork quilt Christmas tree skirt out of all of them - (I wish I had a photo)What a great way to see all of the sweetest clothes again in a nostalgic way every year throughout the years.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Inspired by the previous memento post and expanding on a comment I wrote on this lovely post from Rebecca Woolfe’s blog Girls Gone Child.
It truly is a bittersweet process to fold away babyhood memories and set them aside or pass them along.

What have you done with your baby clothes? What have you kept? Any other creative ideas on how to preserve the memories?

This entry was posted on Friday, April 17th, 2009 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Family Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.