I was recently cleaning out our garage … purging, organizing … the usual. And I came across this. This beautiful remnant, chock-full of memories of days gone by. Travels, bottles, nukies, ten thousand and one goldfish cracker crumbs, babies … and seven year olds.
Truth is, it wasn’t buried too far under the ruble of our madness.
You see, just a couple weeks prior we were piling into the car on our way to the roller coaster park when Hunter asked if I’d bring her stroller.
What she didn’t know is that I’d already had that conversation with myself and decided her SEVEN year old feet were more than competent to walk through the park without the aid of a stroller. Welllll, maybe her feet were competent, but given the fact that I gave in to her request, apparently my momma heart isn’t so competent!
When I sighed my big I’m-giving-in-sigh and put the stroller in the trunk … Hunter did a happy dance, while the three other girls rolled their eyes and gave me a hard time. Me? I hung my head, shut the trunk, and did a little walk of shame to the drivers seat.
The real shame though, came when we got to the roller coaster park.
I took the stroller out, opened it up, and Hunter immediately took her place of honor. I went ahead and started prepping the stroller with our things {cuz let’s face it, while a stroller is awesome for two, three, or SEVEN year old feet … it’s as equally awesome for all our family and momma paraphernalia!}.
With the princess on her throne, and my essentials tucked into the pockets of it, we were ready for a day of fun.
Until …
I started pushing her.
And couldn’t.
Turns out her seven year old feet are heavier than I remembered and it looked like her boots were indeed made for walkin’!
Can you picture the sight? I now had to dethrone the princess {which came with a few tears … hers, not mine, maybe.}, as I humbly folded the stroller and put it back in the car.
The teen definitely had some fun with this one!
When we {Hunter and I, that is} finally accepted the fact the stroller wasn’t going to be spending the day with us, we made our way to the entrance of the park.
In the end, we made it through the day. Her feet didn’t get tired, and I didn’t ache to have my “baby” in her stroller.
Are you curious about the whole purging/organizing thing and what became of the stroller’s fate?
Any guesses? It may help if you knew of my stroller obsession. And the fact that I just admitted to a stroller obsession may be a clue.
How ’bout you? Help a momma out, is there anything you’re not quite ready to say good-bye to? Something you know should be long gone?
I just gave away our play kitchen. The one I bought when my oldest, now 14, was 2. We LOVED it. We used it but my baby is now 6 and it sat unused for a year. And we are moving. But it was PAINFUL to let go of it, all the memories of playing restaurant and my little ones… I cried, just a little. I’m currently keeping my stroller though. One thing at a time please…
Right now there is a Nuk in my purse. My son hasn’t asked for it in over 6 months, but I can’t take it out, just in case! I don’t think I will ever throw it away :)
I can’t toss anything!! It’s so hard! I can just see the stroller story in my mind… Really priceless and someday, as they always say, we are gonna look back at moments like this and laugh!
This had me in tears, I was laughing so hard! Especially the reaction from your older daughters. The whole episode brought back many memories of our strollers.
I have 6 bins of baby clothes in my basement right now. I opened one recently with the hope of going through the clothes and donating them. Instead, I found myself crying while I held each item and remembered moments when they were worn. I swear, the clothes still smell like my babies! I closed up the bin and decided that I will still donate, just not today.
Whenever I tell my husband about how sad I am that the kids are growing up, or I am getting older, he reminds me of the old saying- Do not regret growing older. It’s a privilege denied to many.
I miss the days of having a stroller to carry all of our crap around in!
As for hanging onto things…the one thing we’ve not yet purged is our grocery store. The kids swear they’ll play with it…but they don’t. Yet I can’t bring myself to Craigslist it because that’s the last big pretend play toy :(
I was just cruising through some of these posts and stopped fast when I saw the picture of the stroller. Just today I was waging an inner battle over giving my Maclaren away! I love helping others and the thought of blessing a family with a stroller they would probably never purchase on their own makes me giddy! However, along with the joy comes the sadness of knowing that if I had not miscarried 5 years ago August I would still have one of my children in that stroller. Even though this was posted almost a month ago it was exactly what I need to see today as a reminder that our God is sovereign in everything! And I will always have the crazy memory of my sweet husband buying that stroller for me on a business trip to England and dragging it from his meetings to the airport and on to the airplane simply because he loved me! May the next family have as many sweet memories as I have of that silly stroller! Thanks for sharing.