The Dress-Up Box

A friend of mine was having a garage sale and I knew I could find a “few” things to contribute.  I decided to start in the boys’ closet for cleaning out and finding some things to begin a pile in my own garage.  Plus, I really needed to go through their clothing and switch some things out that used to be B’s that G could now wear, etc.

After I had gone through almost everything, I sat down on the floor in their closet and opened up the green IKEA toy box that we have had since the boys had a toy room (what was supposed to be a formal dining room) in our house back in Texas.  We used to use it to store any miscellaneous toy but since we’ve lived here it has pretty much been a place to store dress-up clothes.  I hadn’t looked inside it in quite a while, and I was just sure there were things in there that could be given away or sold at the sale.

I was wrong.

As I began to move things around to see what all was in there I saw it.  The striped overalls with Thomas the Tank Engine on the front.  And in the next second I spotted the matching hat. Just then, K barged into the room and grabbed the well used “feathersword” from the beloved Wiggles character and tears began to well up in my eyes.  My first baby loved both characters so much and he used to dress up in these clothes ALL. THE. TIME.  I pictured him then, prancing around our house in the overalls and hat, playing with his favorite trains on the track that has now not been set up in a while.

I realized then, as K played the recorded Captain Feathersword laugh, over and over on the toy she snagged,  that I could not possibly let ANY of this go. Not yet.  Maybe never.  I think their children may love it someday too.

I literally sat there for minutes, frozen in time, thinking about how much he (and then his little brother) loved those clothes.

 

Later that afternoon I was standing at our fridge looking at something and I happen to glance over at the magnetic “babysitter notes” that have been posted there since we had our first babysitter, here in Lafayette.  I noticed that under “Bedtime” I had written “around 8 p.m.”.  I have no recollection of a time lately that any one of our children went to bed at 8 p.m.  We are night owls.  Even K, the youngest of three, has not been to bed at that time in a while either.  The babysitter notes are outdated, just like that box of dress up that doesn’t really fit anyone in this house anymore.

 

But the clothes are staying and so will the  “around 8 p.m.”.  I mean, 9 or 9:30 is pretty close to 8 p.m. anyway…