Baby Girl Clothes, Packed
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Family on Wednesday, February 09, 2011 2:11 PM
So we found out our currently in utero babies are boys. We’re happy about this. Boys are great! What’s not to love?
But I have to admit I felt two tiny pangs of disappointment when we got the news.
The first was because I had thought of a perfect pair of girl names. They fit our naming style, and they are lovely, and lovely together but not too matchy, and I was thrilled with them. It made me momentarily sad to have to shelve the names, but I got over it quickly. We’ll save them for possible future girls. It’s fine.
The second pang I feel every time I venture into the storage area of the basement.
We have bins of girl clothes in every size smaller than my daughter’s current one. The sweetest things: ruffled dresses and jumpers, flowered turtlenecks, pink cardigans, tiny leggings, and adorable little shoes, some of them barely worn.
We also have bins of boy clothes, which will get plenty of use in the near future. But - I surely cannot be the first mother to notice this - baby boy clothes are not as fun as girl clothes. There are only so many possible variations of pants and a shirt. In the summer, you can switch your little guy to shorts and t-shirts, but baby girls are wearing small rompers and sundresses in every color of the rainbow.
(Incidentally, I anticipate that the clothing issue will be more complicated with teenage girls than teenage boys, so I’m trying to have my fun while I can. Makes sense, right?)
Most of our girl clothes were hand-me-downs and it’s prudent to save them in case we have another girl, since replacing all that clothing would be expensive. It’s possible we could continue having children for more than another decade; that makes many, many potential wearings for each little garment.
I know, logically, that I will probably have the chance to get our tiny girl clothes out of storage and use them again. I just have to be patient. On the other hand, there’s a local family that has twelve children, and eleven of them are girls. We could have the reverse ratio! In fifteen years I might be unpacking all those clothes for donation, having never gotten a chance to use them again on one of my own children!
This is, really, not a serious problem. I’m dramatizing it. What I do, for now, is dig out special pieces - you know, those fancy baby dresses that barely get worn - for my niece to wear. It makes me happy to see them on her. Chances are good I’ll have another niece someday, and I’ll do the same thing again.
And if God blesses us with more children, and we find out they’re boys, I’ll be thrilled. Like I said, boys are great! What’s not to love? A pack of them would be a joy.
But for as long as we don’t have another girl, I’ll smile fondly at those neatly stacked bins of baby girl clothes and hope, just a little bit, that I eventually get to bring them out again. A mom doesn’t NEED ruffles in her life, but they sure are a fun little perk.
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