End of a (baby) era

Our home is undergoing a bit of a painful metamorphosis. I have been slowly getting rid of the last remaining vestiges of baby items for some time now.

When we moved to a new home last summer, I gave away the majority of clothes the boys had outgrown in attempt to reduce the amount of boxes to shuffle from one house to another. I thought I'd done a pretty good job. I gave away most of the toddler stuff but stopped short of the barely-used veritable baby clothes. (12mos and smaller). I just couldn't part with some of their smaller items--partly because they spent so little time in them and partly because it served as the only tangible evidence of their early months of babyhood that we missed while they were abroad in foster care. (Son #1 came home at 12mos of age and son #2 came home at 6mos.)

I also kept in reserve some of the boys more nostalgic (for me) items. Clothes we met them in, outfits we brought them home with, little T-shirts they wore over and over because it was their favorite (because it had a shark on it) and shoes with which they learned to walk.

But yesterday was the end of an era. I donated the last two bins of baby clothes to a local Womans/Children's charity. I also threw away the last remaining sippy cups, bottles, nipples and pacifiers. The youngest has been off of the latter items for almost a year, but I couldn't bear to part with them, despite the fact that they were getting smelly and the pacies had gunk caked on the inside of the silicone. These silly, seemingly stupid little items were precious to me as they represented the last reminders that a baby once lived under our roof. No more searching for pacies in the middle of the night. No more remembering to pack enough formula to get us through a weekend away. No more cute little rompers with thread-bare knees from a crawling.

No, there are no more babies here any longer, but there is evidence (lots of it) of the little boys they have morphed into. There are plastic swords hanging on the mantlepiece, Spiderman coloring pages adorning the walls and an unending number of laundry baskets full of grass-stained, muddy clothes. I take joy in each crayon mark on the wall, each yogurt-smeared breakfast table and even their fascination (which I do not share nor understand) with Star Wars and Kung Fu.

I swallow hard against a lump in my throat, knowing full well that our "time" is over in which a baby was the center of our lives and the pride of our home. But I smile in gratitude at the generosity of God in creating the family we are...for making our boys brothers, despite their biology and ours.