From Arizona, With Love

We’ve been very fortunate to receive a lot of the babygear and essentials as baby shower gifts and hand-me-downs in the past couple months, but I feel like one thing we can never have enough of are baby clothes! There are so many cute clothes out there, but babies outgrow things so fast, and buying everything brand new can get pretty expensive! That said, we don’t have a lot of friends nearby who are already parents, so there’s not many chances to borrow/receive hand-me-downs. As the due date has started to close in on, I’ve started to check out some of the local baby stores in the area for some good deals on cute baby clothing, but I’ve found that it really racks up! Just when I was feeling overwhelmed about all the baby clothes I still needed to buy, a package arrived yesterday from my cousin Yuko in Arizona.

Back in January, when we spoke on the phone for New Years, Yuko had told me she’d be sending a package my way in a month or so, but I had no idea the package would be so big! We opened it to find that it was brimming with baby girl clothes and other infant-related items.

Accompanying the package was a sweet card from Yuko, with words of encouragement for my last couple months of pregnancy. Yuko worked during her pregnancies, too, so she can empathize with the challenges and exhaustion of being a working expectant mother. She shared about all the hope and excitement she had for our baby, as if it were her own. 🙂

The package contained a whole bunch of adorable hand-me-down clothing that Yuko’s daughters (Beni and Sakura) had outgrown. She had already given us a lot of gender-neutral baby clothing back when we had visited in September and didn’t know the gender of the baby yet. After we told her we were expecting a girl, she collected all her girl clothes that were still in really good condition to send to us — some were even unworn, with the tags still on them!

From super-sweet floral prints…

to colorful plaids, stripes, and polka dots…

to the girly pinks…

…and accessories. Look at that tiny swimsuit!

Also included were some kimono-style wraps that you can only find in Japan:

My favorite is this one… how adorable is this jinbei?
I can’t wait to wrap our baby girl in it! ♥

There were also some adorable bibs, which I hear you can never have enough of!

Yuko also sent us a few additional Japanese children’s books and a lullaby CD. 🙂

As a congratulatory gift, she sent us a scrapbook kit to fill with photos and memories of our baby, too! I love scrapbooking, so I can’t wait to use it! 😀

Also in the package were some very practical items like babyfood dishes and breastmilk storage bags — all of it will come in very handy as we welcome Baby Allen in a couple months. We’re so grateful to Yuko and her family for all the hand-me-downs and gifts! We had already received so much when we visited them last September, so we were incredibly touched by their generosity once again — we can’t thank them enough!