Growing

In the spirit of purging, I went through Evie’s clothes yesterday. She has more clothes than any person I have ever met, except for perhaps my mother. Now THAT woman had more clothes than anyone I had ever met. Until now. Evie could totally take her. This is one of the many reasons they share a name, but I digress.
Since it was announced that the tiny person within my womb was a girl, boxes upon boxes of clothes have poured into our home. Being a new parent, I did not know how many we would need. Excited to welcome our new baby girl, I accepted every hand-me-down offered, until the closet door could no longer close under the pressure of pink fabric bursting from within. Hand-me-downs are one thing, but new clothes are an entirely different matter altogether. Onesies and dresses and little pink sweaters have been flooding our mailbox with a voracity unrivaled since Imelda Marcos discovered Jimmy Choo.
Dilligently, I have been sorting and folding and putting each item away, according to size. 0-3 months: tags removed, washed and placed in the dresser. 6-9 months: tags kept on, placed in the top clear Rubbermaid storage bin, 9 months and up, in the bottom clear storage bin. Dresses and sweaters hung in the closet.
In the last few month, my little tiny girl has finally progressed past the 0-3 moths clothing and has graduated into the 6 month apparel. As such, I had to readjust my organizational system. 0-3 month clothing was to go in the bin, 6-9 month clothes were to have tags removed, be washed and placed in the dresser.
The problem was, she has so many clothes, there wasn’t enough room in the bins. Something had to go. My sister is having a baby girl in May, so I decided that we could send some things her way.
As I sat on the floor in Evie’s room last night, going through the clothes that no longer fit, deciding which we would pass on, and which we would save, (those items we just couldn’t bear to part with,) I held up a little newborn-sized creeper, the one that we put on Evie when we brought her home, the only thing that fit her tiny little frame, and I was overcome.
I looked over at her, crawling across the floor, toy in hand, line of drool running across her chin, look of determination across her face as she went for the diaper champ for the 11teenth time in as many minutes, I realized how much she has grown.
She is still very tiny, by most standards. She can barely crawl, she is still mostly helpless, and relies on me for everything. But compared to 6 and a half months ago, she is a completely different person, and for that matter, so am I.
No longer am I gripped with fear that she is going to stop breathing while she sleeps, and subsequently, no longer am I running over to her bed every 20 minutes to check and make sure she is okay. No longer am I afraid to carry her across the floor, certain I might drop her little tiny body and break it into a million tiny pieces. She doesn’t seem so very fragile now.
Now she’s crawling and cooing and screaming and shouting. She can laugh and giggle and bounce and hit and pinch and kick and make all sorts of ruckus. She can make her needs known and all you have to do is look at her little face to know that she’s up to something. I guess we knew all along that she was a little pistol, but now she’s really able to show us, and we are having so much more fun with her now. We feel so much more comfortable as parents, so much more confident.
I looked back down at the little striped creeper and I put it in the save pile. It's really not a very cute one. It’s not pink, it doesn’t have flowers or animals on it. It’s just a yellow and blue striped pajama creeper. But when I look at it, I see my tiny baby girl sleeping in a bassinet, finally home after years of trying and months of agony and illness. So that outfit is staying. We’ll send a bunch of other ones to my sister.