End of an Era

I remember pouring over all the baby items when we finally learned we were expecting our first baby.  Travel systems, gliders, the crib...

We settled on a pretty wooden crib that we could purchase a matching changing table for.  The table held all of the pretty quilts, bedding, spare wipes, diapers, and bath things, as our first little house didn't have a linen closet.

I remember ordering the crib excessively early.  I was so excited.  I knew we wouldn't need it for months, but I was so glad to get it.  Justin put it up the bedroom beside ours.  The house had originally been a two bedroom, but a previous owner had converted the attic space to two more 'rooms,' though they had neither closets nor doors.  We, of course wanted our newest addition in the room next door.  The light would shine through the two windows, filtered by the trees.

We left that house when Kate was only one, and still using the crib.  We moved it to Alabama, where is sat in a huge room.  She slept in it night and naps...long naps in those days!

Justin was granted a professorship the following fall, and we followed his academic dreams to Kansas.  We set the crib up, this time with Kate's help, to receive a new little baby.  Gabby slept there for nearly two years, just like Kate, when she was moved so the crib would be ready to hold yet another little one.

Nate actually slept in it very little in that house, taking quite some time to sleep through the night, but when we moved to Tennessee he had a nice little room where he slept in it every night.  We were only in that house for a year, giving ourselves time to look around and purchase a house that we could love and call ours.  We set the crib up in a room for him again, and I teased that he would stay in it until he climbed out or went to college.  I didn't make good on that promise, but he did stay in much later than his big sisters.  When we moved him out, for whatever reason, we didn't immediately take the crib down.  It had become part of the background of the house.

Then we found there would be another little one to join our family, and she was able to sleep there too.  Over the past few weeks, we've moved Ellie to a big girl bed, and the crib has finally, almost exactly eleven years from the day we put our first little baby in it, served it's usable life.

So Justin took the tools and pulled that crib apart one last time, but not before I got pictures of the little teeth marks, and scratches that remind me of the little people who have slept there, even if they aren't so little anymore.

Kristy