One of the many things I did not anticipate about parenthood is how much time I would spend sorting through clothes. Kids, of course, grow. I knew that. But I didn’t realize it would mean pawing through my daughter’s dresser drawers every month or two, evaluating what still fits and what’s still in season. I am perpetually piling clothes into boxes: clothes to save, clothes to pass along, clothes to take to Junebug for store credit, clothes that months ago seemed impossibly big and are now somehow too small.
Over the weekend I said goodbye to two favorite summer-weight sleepers: one hot pink and printed with googly-eyed jellyfish, the other chartreuse and emblazoned with puffer fish. These silly sea creatures delighted me for months. They were bright and funny, just like our kid. And now they no longer fit. I felt a pang of nostalgia for our daughter’s babyhood that, 8 months in, is already slipping through our fingers.
And then I thought about the boxes of hand-me-downs in her closet: bigger clothes for a bigger kid, stuff to walk and run and play in. We may have taken a lot of outfits to Junebug, but we’re still at the beginning. There is so much yet to try on — so much to grow into.
— Sarah Harris is the Addison Independent’s digital editor.