Purple Cow Pajamas

Because this is the first weekend that we are both at home and not sick since my mom's accident, we have been tackling a lot of projects. Probably more than anyone should take on in a weekend, but every time one gets completed...o-kay, half completed...o-kay, started, it triggers yet another project that must be tackled. And it must be tackled this weekend. O-kay, probably not. But the combination of having six weekends sucked out of your summer, a manic personality, and school being just around the corner means there is a lot of work to do at our house.

One of the many tasks, I've worked on is going through the girls clothes, boxing up what doesn't fit, donating items that my girls are done with, and getting down the clothes that were previously too big. Most of these items are things that Tee has outgrown, and I've saved for Sweet Potato. It wasn't always like this though, my mom often bought things at the end of a season to save for Tee to wear the next year. But when I started going through that basket, I realized we were down to only one thing, a pair of size 5 purple, flannel pajamas, covered with pictures of cows and milk cartons. Cute and a little ridiculous, but that pair of pajamas brought me to tears. Not just because it's the last thing my girls will wear that their Mammah picked out, but because those pajamas are a stark reminder of how my life is turning out so different from what I imagined.

My mom purchased those pajamas for Tee when she was barely three weeks old. We were on our first trip with Tee back to my home town. A college friend was being ordained near-by, and my mom was on a mission to find the perfect little puffy-sleeved, smocked newborn dress for the occasion. Oddly enough in the Spring of 2006, there was a shortage of that style. As we scoured the racks at the local Nordstrom, my mom came across those silly cow pajamas, on clearance. She insisted on buying them for her granddaughter, even though she wouldn't be able to wear them for at least four years. But she was sure that Tee would need them when she was a little older, and could spend a weekend on the farm with her other grand parents.

My husband grew up on a dairy farm. My mother-in-law was a former dairy princess way back in the fifties, and as an adult had served as president of the state dairy pageant board. My mom just knew that Tee's other grandma would get a kick out of seeing her granddaughter in dairy themed pajamas. And she would have. So I went along with my mom's plan. Little did we know that neither one of them would be around to see their granddaughter in the purple cow pajamas.