Emotions dressed in baby clothes

Ugh, it's 7am and my hubby woke me up when he got up at 5.  And now I'm starving.  I spent the last hour sorting baby clothes from a friend plus what I still have saved, and I have nice neat piles of newborn, 3 month, and 6 month clothes on the floor of Tadpole's room.  I also still have two huge bins of clothes from another friend, which I'm sort of hoping are 6 month and up, so I can just transfer them to my own bins in the garage and not deal with them now.

Since I don't know where Nameless Baby is going to sleep, I have some storage space in Tadpole's room (where no one currently sleeps) and some in Turtle's room (where both kids currently sleep, but I'm thinking might eventually become a "boy room").  Tadpole didn't move all her stuff with her when she decided to start sleeping with Turtle, and still considers her room to be her own, so I can't exactly turn it into a nursery.  Interestingly, her room shares a wall with Turtle's room, and its the wall that Turtle's bed is up against.  Since I've been in here for the last hour sorting clothes, I have heard Turtle tossing and turning and bumping the wall a lot.  I'm wondering if he wakes up Tadpole and that's why she never gets enough sleep.

Going through these clothes has had a strong impact on me.  I can so clearly remember what it was like when the kids were babies and I dressed them in some of these clothes.  It's like I'm being transported through time to those early mornings when hubby was sleeping and I was up with one or both babies.  I can remember the quality of the light, the chaos of the house under construction, the quietness of the early morning hours, the first smiles.  I can remember the weather - even the winter weather like the rain, which we haven't had much of for four years now.  I remember the baby group with all the parents I met on those early Wednesday mornings.  The frustration with breastfeeding.  The long, long, looooong walks in the park trying to get the kids to nap, or go to sleep, or just getting myself out of the house.  The isolation and loneliness.  The awesomeness of being a new mother.  The insanity of having TWO babies together.

The clothes from when the twins were a bit older don't evoke those same emotions.  Maybe that's why I was able to get rid of the stuff that was over 6 months, but I could never manage to get rid of the 0-6 month stuff.  I feel like it's where my memories have resided for these past 5 years.  And those memories feel so different from what came after, too.  After those first 6 months, it feels more like just normal memories, things that don't make me feel like I'm tearing apart from the joy and grief  and pain and happiness and wonder and just overwhelming feelings.  But those first 6 months, man.  It's intense.  What a trip.  And I'm about to do it all over again.  I can't wait.