To save or to sell

The fuschia pants with the sparklies. The pink Gap velour sweatsuit. The teeny tiny white onesie we got at the hospital.

I am going through bins of Sage's old clothes, from newborn til now. I am having a ginormous garage sale to raise money for my marathon. So I'm sorting by size and by stain, and surprisingly, by sentimentality.

It is a slow process. Not just because of the sheer enormity of the job - YEGADS the child has a lot of clothes! - but in the emotions that accompany my task.

I hold each item in my hands like a butterfly, gently admiring as I think back to moments when my little girl wore them. The tears come. How can I sell these? How can I not keep this tangible evidence that yes, Sage was once this small, once demanded to be carried ALL day, once finally, finally smiled at me for the first time?

I don't remember being this attached over Sawyer's stuff. I sent all his clothes from 0-12 months to my friend E. She was having a boy, and already had a girl, so she sent me her daughter's stuff. Sure, I kept a few things, but most of it went to M. Who happened to be born the day after Sage.

The difference is that I was already pregnant with Sage. I knew I'd have another baby to dress, one who would wear pink and lavender and girly stuff instead of shirts with monster trucks and race cars.

A baby.

Sage is likely my last. And so I mourn.

She is the age Sawyer was when she was born. They are 21 months apart, almost to the day. I can't even imagine having a newborn now. We joke that if she was the first, she'd be an only. It is a marker of time passed, though. She seems younger than he was at the same age: he was already in his "big boy" bed. He was speaking in sentences. He was happy most of the time, and, I now realize, relatively easy.

Sage was not. She wailed for her first 7 1/2 months. I told David during some of the worst of it, like when she cried for seven hours straight, that what made me most sad was that I had brought such an unhappy child into the world.

Selfishly, I feel I missed out. There weren't a lot of quiet moments, times when she would coo and belly laugh and was just happy to simply be. It was tough to savor my "last" moments of being a mommy to an infant.

Maybe I want one more chance.

David goes from being completely convinced that we're done to throwing me a little kernel of hope every now and again. Then I have to ask myself if I want another one because our family doesn't feel complete, or so that I can have one last baby to cuddle.

Shopping, anyone?