Baby Clothes Galore

Friends of mine in Hyde Park stopped by this afternoon with sackfuls of baby clothes and toys. They have two boys in elementary school and at last were ready to part with their baby clothes, etc. Their mom is a friend of mine from college and emailed last week asking if I knew of a good social service agency that could use them.

I suggested they avoid the middleman and go straight to my neighbors. She was agreeable. Apparently it was quite a challenge to make the whole load fit in the car. We put everything in the basement.

Later, Adriana was free and came by to take a look through all the goodies. She brought Angel along. He got a little sleepy and I carried him around trying to get him to go out. We almost got there but not quite. Joey popped in and out, playing with/annoying his little brother, much to the amusement of his mother and me.

Angel liked a couple of the toys right off. There was a house made out of fabric with a mirror for a window and cloth doors with a picture of a baby duck behind them. He was playing "gravity check"--dropping the house and getting happy when I would pick it up and give it back to him.

We joked around a lot while Adriana checked out the rest of the loot. Lots of Osh-Kosh. "Ropa para gueros," she said. (Clothes for white people.)

"Gueros ricos," I said. We started laughing about Angel dressing like a rich white boy. Adriana figured she got about two years' worth of clothes for him out of it. Then we were laughing about all the trips to Swap-O-Rama she could skip. I suggested she could sell the clothes at Swap-O-Rama when he's through with them and she smiled. I hope she does.

It reminded me of a time when I was about 14 years old and my favorite cousins came over with grocery bags full of their hand-me-downs. I remember being really excited about going through them to see what fit me. I was wearing some of their sweaters through my 20s.

Eventually Adriana decided she would take the whole business and split it up between herself, her niece (with a newborn) and some neighbors up the street who have two toddler-ish boys.

Joey and Adriana and I hauled the whole mess out of the basement into my back yard. Joey hopped the fence and we handed the bags and boxes over to him. They're stored on their back porch for now. I hope there were some socks in there--a few weeks ago poor Angel's socks were hanging off his toes, he'd outgrown them so much. There were a nice pair of sneakers and some sandals for later. Adriana really liked the sandals.