That In-Between Place

We are at that in between time of the year.  It happens every spring and every fall.  Should I wear short sleeves or long sleeves?  Should I wear a heavy coat or a light weight coat.  Or...no coat at all?!  These are the days that sometimes make me crazy, as a mother, sending my kids off to school.  It's cold in the morning, but it's warm by the afternoon.  Don't get me wrong.  I welcome the warmer afternoons with, well...a warm embrace!  I am so happy for the sunshine and the opportunity to play outside, reconnect with neighbors after the frigid hibernation, and just breath in the fresh air.  So, therein lies the predicament our coat closet is in right now.  It's over-stuffed.  Packed to the gills.  Over-flowing with every protection you could possibly need for almost any weather condition imaginable. 

My kids have always enjoyed the changing of the seasons, fashionably speaking.  We flip the closets, literally.  Every fall we rotate the warm weather clothes for the cold weather clothes and vise versa in the spring.  Jenna especially enjoys this process, being the mini fashionista that she is.  It's not uncommon to hear her say repeatedly, "Oh, I forgot about that skirt," or "Oh, I love that shirt.  That's my favorite shirt."  I never could understand why I would see kids with short sleeve shirts on in the winter and the parents complaining that they couldn't get their children to wear something warmer.  My thought has always been, "Put the short sleeve shirts away in the winter!"  I guess I'm just too practical sometimes.  It's certainly not like I have an over-abundance of closet space in my house.

Towards the end of the in-between phase, you play games with Mother Nature and try to figure out when it is "safe" to truly put the former season's clothes away until next year.  I remember last spring, I had my winter coat in the closet until May!  The cold just seemed to hang on for so long and I knew that as soon as I put it away that I would regret it.  With my kids, I have to guess if I should hold onto the clothes until next year.  Will it still fit?  Will they outgrow it between now and then?  Decisions.  Decisions.  The kids mourn the loss of a favorite, yet, outgrown shirt or dress or even pajamas.  "But that is my faaaa-vorite shirt," they will whine.  "It still fits!" they'll retort.  "You look ridiculous in it," I will counter.  So, I resort to confiscating said article of clothing when I do laundry and they are away at school.  Believe it or not, they sometimes never even realize the garments are AWOL.  It's amazing what can be accomplished in the cover of darkness, or when you're home alone!