Attachment issues

I have already droned on and on about this to a few people so I apologize if this is repetitive. Last week we found out that we're having a boy, which is pretty much what we both wanted since originally we had decided that one of each sex would be pretty much perfect. And I knew Kevin really wanted a boy so I was even more happy for him that he will have a son and buddy through life.

My friend Meg called and said she was shipping off a box of clothing since she is now having a daughter and won't need her son's clothes anymore. Which is really great and I promised to do the same thing with my girl clothes.

So I proceeded to the basement and extracted the 0-6 month bins of clothes for my precious Delaney. All of a sudden I was overcome with sadness at the thought of parting with all of these clothes. The clothes brought back tons of memories and images of my precious darling daughter as an infant. I sat there on the ground and just stared endlessly at the piles of onesie's, footed pj's, dresses, sleep sacks, etc. It just didn't feel right to part with them, like giving away her clothes was like giving away a little part of her. The rational side of me realized that they were just items of clothing (a fair amount of them gifts or hand-me-downs to begin with) and that I wasn't actually shipping Delaney off to California. It was just some cotton and poly blends, right? Then why was I so attached to these clothes? Maybe it's because I was afraid of losing the Delaney legacy by having a boy. Maybe I was hoping deep down that maybe we'd have another girl. Maybe I grow to attached to THINGS. All of which are possibilities.

After some long ruminating, I've decided that a big part of it is the fear that by giving away her clothes I am giving away the memories. It's silly to think that by holding on to the clothes I will be more likely to remember all of the images and times we spent when she was an infant. But maybe that's the best reasoning I have to explain why it was so darn hard to part with them. I find that my memory is not as good as it used to be, especially since getting pregnant with Delaney and especially after having her. It's like your brain gets so filled up with love and thoughts about your child that in order to make space a lot of other stuff gets pushed out. And Delaney was fussy and colicky to boot, so I did not do a good job of documenting milestones and memories in her early months. Hopefully this blog will help me continue to write and remember how my children are and then I won't get so emotional about shipping off some ducky pj's.

The good news is that I am sending the clothes along to one of my dearest friends ever and her precious bundle of girl joy (Danica) will be able to wear all of the clothes. Heck, some of the clothes Delaney wore as an infant came from Meg's older sister Debbie, so what better person to get Delaney's clothes?

I vow to be a better documenter of my children's lives so I don't have any lingering guilt about remembering it all, and clinging unnecessarily to objects instead of the memories themselves.