On to the next chapter...

This past weekend, Kyle and I cleaned out the garage.  Whenever we clean out the garage, we start making a "dump pile" of things that need to go to our local landfill.  It's kind of fun - because we get crazy (yes, stupid as it sounds) and REALLY start cleaning and throwing things out that we haven't used in years.  It's refreshing to finally make room, especially to park both of our cars in the garage.  Although such a small thing, it was a huge accomplishment for us!

As we were cleaning, I came upon the diaper bag in the garage.  It somehow made it out of my car and never quite made it to the house a while ago, and just was sitting in a corner.  This is the same diaper bag we used when Tyler was just weeks old, and we were making our first ventures to the mall or just for a drive.  If the kids were with me, it was with me.  The horror of being somewhere and not having a diaper if needed, was not fun, so I became a boy scout with that thing.  It had EVERYTHING in it.  It's silly, but it became a part of our lives.  We tried bigger diaper bags, smaller ways to carry stuff, but this one just worked.  It was enough for all we needed.

I picked it up and dug around inside.  It had sunscreen from last summer, some pull-ups that were too small on Connor now, hand sanitizer, some underwear and shorts for Connor (in case of an emergency) and some free samples of baby soap and lotion that I received when Tyler was like a week old, and never needed to use.  It even still had a little zipper pull that I picked up on my first business trip that I ever took after Tyler was born.  It says "Virginia" and also has his name on it.  Tyler was 13 months old when I got that.

I carefully removed everything from the bag, and set the stuff on the dryer.  I wasn't sure what to do with it.  I then looked at the bag. 

I walked out to the garage, held it up and looked at Kyle.  His eyes got big and he looked at me. 

"Are you throwing that away?", he said.... sort of hesitating.

"I don't know," I said, "what do you think?"

We both were quiet, and I'm sure we were thinking the same thing.  Could that be the end of the diaper bag???  Do we seriously have kids that are so grown up, that we don't need to worry about diapers or pull-ups or extra clothes or extra pacifiers or having the right bath soap or an extra bottle or extra onesies or even extra nursing pads "just in case".  My head swam with all of the things that we have had to jam in there over the last almost 6 years. 

I turned, and threw it in the garbage can.  Although we did a little cheer, as I thought about it, it made me a little sad for those times too.  Sometimes it's the silly little things that are so symbolic for me of certain times in the boys lives.  They are now so grown up they dress themselves, tell me what they want to eat, and Tyler named for me the other night the planets, in the order that they appear in space. 

So, we closed a chapter in our lives.  And although the ended with the throwing away of a diaper bag, that bag was a part of so many stories...