My Babies Aren't Babies Anymore

As you already know the boys were visiting family this past week.  I took this opportunity to do some organizing and cleaning of their room and their toys.  It's really hard to throw toys away when their around so I decided to avoid the drama and do it when they were gone.  Little did I know, I would have my own internal drama.

I started with the stuffed animals. . .we had tons of them.  A whole corner in their bedroom was dedicated to stuffed animals that never get touched.  Actually, Noah's the one who sleeps with stuffed animals, Aiden does very seldom. We have our Rudolph from Christmas, our Woody doll and Bob and Larry from Veggietales, these are the friends that sleep with Noah and he used to sleep with a small soft blue blanket.  I kept looking at that corner of stuffed animals piles high and thought, "it's time to get rid of some these." 

Little did I know how hard it was going to be to pick out the age appropriate dolls to keep and the ones to giveaway.  I knew I needed to give away the "baby" stuffed animals but my heart broke because this meant my boys weren't considered "babies" anymore.  I even  picked up the blanket at one point and held it to my face almost in tears. . .big mistake, little boys leave funny odors. 

I know each phase of your children's lives come with it's own rewards, therefore, my mind knows that the next phase is going to be special but my heart sometimes has a hard time letting go.  I did the right thing, I gave away the stuffed animals that were meant for infants, however, I did keep a few that I knew were special to them.  I put them away in my storage box to give to them someday and of course, I washed the little blue blanket and kept it.  When they returned home, as expected, they never noticed the missing stuffed animals.  I suppose we can't get cluttered down with what we don't need, we need to make room for the new blessings God will give us.