Nesting

On Saturday afternoon, Matt and Chloe went to practice at the track and Oliver and I stayed home. It was a chilly day so I set out some Legos for Oliver and he contentedly played in his (and Chloe's room--shhhh) while I was upstairs tackling the attic.

We have a walk up attic that easily gets disorganized. It serves as part closet (our house is 80 years old, our closets are a joke/insult in 2013), storage for crystal and serving platters, storage for luggage, holiday decoration storage and houses 8 years of saved clothing for Emma Claire passed down from big sis Chloe.

First step, schedule the Big Brothers/Big Sisters to come and pick up a donation---they got me inspired and set a deadline to get "it" out of the attic if we didn't need it or use it.

Once I cleared up, bagged it and took it down stairs I could tackle the clothing bins. Tackling the stacks and stacks of giant storage bins of girl's clothing was like hitting the baby clothing jackpot and overwhelming. There is 12 giant storage bins of clothes. I've kept them according to size, but there was an extra storage bin of just shoes which had to be sorted.

I found the outfit Chloe was wearing on the red couch at The White Swan Hotel and plan to take it to China for Emma Claire to wear at the consulate appointment. Love it!!

I sorted through everything and donated some outfits that I could recall only fit Chloe for one wear (from all indications, Emma Claire is a larger baby than Chloe).

I took note of what was missing--pajamas and socks. I also took note of the ridiculous amounts of baby shoes I bought. TONS of baby shoes.

The saddest part was the bin that contained all of the gifts exchanged with other October LID families while we waited. There were cards and ladybug onesies. There were two shirts gifted to us, for Chloe and Emma Claire to wear, one said "Jie Jie" (big sister) and the other said "Mei Mei" (little sister). The "Jie Jie" shirt was a size 4---four sizes smaller than Chloe's current size and indicative of the length of time we have waited for Chloe's Mei Mei.

Now that the attic is cleaned and baby inventory has been taken, it's time to shop (my favorite part).

Clockwise: Care package sent via Ann at The Red Thread to Emma Claire, shoes and socks for the children at Emma Claire's orphanage, pajamas, luggage bag tags from Etsy, bibs from Etsy, blanket lovey for Emma Claire via Etsy, more bibs via Etsy and new luggage--it seems our attic was the dying place for worn out suitcases--I got these bright green cases at an additional 20% off of the sale price.