I prefer to rip the bandage off quickly.

First of all, my mom has been visiting, so I've been pretty much offline the whole time she's been here. Six years since I saw her! It was a great visit, she really bonded with the girls and we sent her off today with great struggles to not break down in tears in the middle of the airport terminal.

Best of all, Mom made it clear that she approves of my family and my home and me and how I'm living my life and that she's proud of me. She even told me that I put together a better Thanksgiving dinner than she ever did.

Honestly, is there any better gift a parent can give their child than approval?

Then I came home, logged onto my email and saw a letter in Freecycle from a poor mother, two weeks from the due date of her baby girl, who needs all sorts of clothes, sippy cups, bedding, etc.

And that little nudge came, the one that (being religious) I always interpret as coming from God. "You have a whole lot of baby stuff you haven't been able to bring yourself to give away yet. Give it to her."

I have never regretted doing what God wants me to do. So, off I went to the garage, where I cried some more, this time over saying goodbye to my daughters' babyhoods while I pulled three big storage boxes out of the remaining detritus from our move and brought them into the living room to be sorted and put into garbage bags. (I really need those storage bins still.)

I have two large 30 gallon garbage bags of tiny baby girl stuff. I have another garbage bag full of larger sizes. And that's with having given away quite a big of stuff in the middle range a couple of years ago to a woman from church. I'm also giving up the double stroller that was a present at Gabrielle's baby shower. (The husband's colleagues decided to throw a baby shower. I said I already had pretty much everything I needed and they didn't need to give me a shower. They said, "Then tell us what you don't need, but really, really want." Upshot: double stroller, sleepsacks, bathtub toys, books, and frilly, frilly, girly outfits that were simply too cute for words.)

I had forgotten just how much baby girl stuff I had. I spent my first pregnancy haunting yard sales and got a whole bunch of stuff that way, including our high chair. Then, at Arielle's baby shower, I got another huge amount of stuff. Finally, I was the only one with a baby girl at church just then (and for the next few years) so I kept getting everyone's hand-me-downs. A lot of this stuff still has tags, because I never had time to get either of them into all the outfits before they grew out of them!

Pretty amazing, considering that, back then, we were hanging on to solvency with a white-knuckle grip.

I am keeping the outfits both of them came home from the hospital in, and a few other outfits that I always particularly loved. I'm giving away the blue velvet dress they both wore for their first Christmas photos. Also the sweet little shoes they wore, the sippy cups, the sweet blankets, the little coats and sweaters, the nightgowns, onesies, sleepsacks, the snowsuit, the jumpsuits, the diaper covers, the stockings, the hats and bonnets, all the little pink things that I used to fill up an entire washing machine with, almost daily.

I'm starting to get excited about giving this stuff away. It'll be fun stuffing her car with all this neat stuff. I told her, in my email, that I hope all this gives her as much pleasure as it gave me.

Besides, it's better to get through the pain all at once, rather than drag it out.