When my son was born, his sister was six and a half. I had given away all the baby furniture and items, certain that I was finished with baby times. This time around, I knew that all the junk stores sell you is more about image and profit margin than about what we truly need. A few cloth diapers, a car seat and an empty drawer to put the baby in (okay, a bassinet), and I was set. In talking about the “things” with my friend, she shared with me that her family had a changing table/dresser that had been passed down through five cousins. They were ready to share it with the next baby. It sounded good to me and the price tag fit too. Two weeks before my baby Zev came into the world, we loaded up a friend’s station wagon and hauled in the well-loved piece of furniture. Each child’s name was written in the back of the dresser along with the year of his/her birth. I guess this clunky, unattractive hunk of wood was an heirloom. At any rate, it was serviceable.

Fast-forward almost three years: my little baby has moved from his bassinet (I didn’t really use the drawer, but thought about it) to his crib (a hand-me-down I insisted we paint blue to cover up its original candy cane pink hue), and now he had a toddler bed, formerly his sister’s. Clearly, all his babyhood accoutrements were well loved. So, the hand-me-down-kid was ready for the next transition. No longer in diapers, it was time to say goodbye to his changing table and bring in my old childhood dresser.

We began to talk about the logistics of the move –how to fit it out the door, where to put his belongings during the move, which car would hold the dressers. But we didn’t think to talk to Zev about this change. In fact, we didn’t talk to him about it at all, we just discussed these details in front of him with little care about his input. After all, he is not even three!

The night before the move, Zev was in his bathtub and began to cry, “I don’t want to say goodbye to my changing table!”

Large crocodile tears streaked his red face and his lower lip protruded. I lifted my not-so-little man out of the bath and hugged his warm, wet body. His loss was palpable and it was not just the redecoration of his room. The changing table was part of his infancy. The magnitude of his sadness touched a chord in me. We were both on the cusp of seeing his babyhood carried out the door, put into a station wagon and taken to another home.

On the day of the move, Maia, his big sister, took a sharpie and pulled out the top drawer to add Zev’s name to the list of children who shared this heirloom.

He wept again, “Don’t write my name!”

We all went to the changing table and said goodbye, but Zev was sad, maybe uncertain. Would he like his new dresser? Would he have to be a big boy all the time now? My husband and the new baby’s father removed the changing table and shortly afterward, my old dresser stood tall in his room. Zev’s eyes twinkled a little — maybe he was a bit excited. “Mommy, I want to open the drawer by myself.”

A few minutes later, Zev began to crawl on all fours.

“I am a baby,” he said.

He babbled, crawled around and climbed into his blanket. At lunchtime, a half an hour later, I lifted up my “baby” and asked him if he wanted me to feed him like an infant. He did. Then, in an instant, my baby was gone, the changing table was no longer missed, and Zev hopped off my lap and ran into his room, ready to take his big boy steps into a new phase in his, and our life.