Where Did the Baby Go?

I've been tagging items for an upcoming consignment sale which is not an easy thing to do if one is a sentimental pack rat, such as myself.  I've forced myself to be unemotional and unsparing in my tagging, to get these boxes of stuff out of my basement and into the basement of someone else.  (That doesn't mean I don't have a box or two of things set aside.)  My weakness is footy pajamas.  As I put them on hangers and attach the tags (Priced to sell!), I have flashes of this kid or that in them.

How can I sell the footy pajamas that my babies wore after their baths - when they were sweet smelling, clean, soft, drowsy?  How can The Spouse expect me to say goodbye to those worn, nubby, stained, long outgrown pajamas?  Doesn't he remember me nursing those babies?  Reading them stories? Putting them in their cribs or Big Boy Beds? I see babies with gummy smiles kicking in delight when I find them in their cribs in the morning. I can still see those drunken sailors with potbellies staggering around the living room.

 I hug the pjs close to me, and my arms ache to feel those sturdy chubby babies again or to smell the tops of their sweet baby heads.

When I was a child, I had a Little Golden book entitled, Where Did the Baby Go? The little girls searches her house for the baby in the picture until she finally figures out the answer (spoiler alert: she's the baby, grown up.)

Where did the baby go?

Where did the other one go?

I'm glad they are growing and healthy, and I look forward to watching them grow, but I miss my babies, and I know I will miss my little boys when they are gone.  Why did my childhood last years (especially in junior high pre-algebra class) but their childhoods are going by in the blink of an eye?