I don't see why you would be hurt, he gave you the clothes and when he saw someone else that may need them (knowing your son has outgrown them by now), he thought he can forward them to this other mom. You should have been honest and said, 'oh, I didn't realize you would need them back so I passed them on to other people that needed them. I have a few things left that are in storage if you'd like me to look?' and he probably would have been okay. Now, you've told him 'yeah sure' and when you don't produce them, you are going to have to admit you gave most of them away and it may look like you aren't being honest.

Maybe you could talk to the intended recipient and tell her what happened and ask if she is truly in need, you'd be willing to pass on what you have. Then, you can probably include some of the things you bought. I understand keeping things for the next baby, but if it's all boy stuff and you have a girl, you'd need new stuff anyways. I used to keep the unisex items, and maybe a few of the most adorable things I couldn't part with but now that you are better established and when you have your next child, you will be in a better position to buy that child new things. (now that you know what it costs too.)

I think if you admit what happened, it won't be that big a deal. My sisters (& sister in law) and I traded baby clothes around so much, we never knew who had it first or where it came from. There was a new baby born into our family at least once every six months for about four years. What do you think he'd have said if you told the truth? I still don't get how you'd feel hurt?

Tell me him the truth that I passed it all on someone else because you told me to do so. tell him you do not have any of that clothes anymore since you were never told to give it back.

I have this similar type of story.

when i was like around age 18 still in high school my best friend's mom was cleaning her closet and throwing stuff out. she told me she has these old fasion shoes that nobody wears anymore and since I have such small feet I am the only one who can wear them. i said thank you, but I don't need them. They were made in 50s. i am serious, they were old. She said that if i won't take them, she will just throw them out but i might use them for like a costume ball. I took them just to be polite, wore them once. After years in my closet I finally threw them out.

When I was about 25 (7 years later)my friend called and said that mom wants shoes back because they are back in fashion and she might want to sell them on flee market. i said I threw them out and if they would tell me to keep the shoes I would keep them! I didn't even want the shoes. My friend was upset with me. I was in so much shock, you won't believe me!

Tell him the truth ASAP, that you were excited, etc. These things happen.

so she expected you to store the shoes until & unless she called for them?
How much was she paying you for storage?

People are downright odd...

my aunt gave me a sewing machine.
she's 88 years old & she has a much newer model (this machine was one of the old heavy black metal Singers that sits in a cabinet).

I couldn't get it to work right, but I figured I'd tinker with it when I had time.

then my aunt called me & said, "sylvia, I want my sewing machine back."

well...
what're you gonna do?

so I took it back.

& she said that that wasn't her machine, & she wanted me to go get *her* machine.

She refused to acknowledge that that was her sewing machine & that it didn't work right when she gave it to me!

She told me she knew it wasn't hers because she had put a mark on hers (right, I always mark my heavy appliances & furniture, too), *& that this machine didn't work right*, & hers did.

Now she's told her kids that I took her sewing machine & brought her this other one that doesn't work well.

so everybody's mad at me.

I should have told them the machine was broken & I'd put it in the trash.

& my ex "gave" me a set of homemade stereo speakers & a big ugly waterbed that I couldn't stand (but he balanced the account by stealing several things).

I traded the waterbed to the 15-year-old boy next door for yardwork.

Then the ex showed up one afternoon & told me he'd come by "to pick up my speakers & the waterbed".

& he was *offended* that I'd gotten rid of the waterbed!

I let him take the speakers.

What was the question?

Take him a token sackful of baby clothes, whatever you can put your hands on fairly easily, & tell him these are the only ones you can find, if there were others, they must have been in a bunch you already gave to someone who needed them.

i like sewing machine and waterbed stories sylvia. really, no shame.ha

as about shoe story: they were very cheap, the whole family. she gave shoes away thinking she can't make any money of them but then she saw somebody selling similar shoes at a resale store 7 years later!!!(for next to nothing amount of money of course) and she figured she could make money out of it. i have bunch of stories about that family. i grew up with this girl, we were best friends but her parents were weirdly cheap. my parents could not stand them.

i have another story for you which actually is the opposite situation. when we were moving (very far away) my grandma's friend used to come to our house (when i was not there)and look for what she could take of mine before we move. she came once when i was out and told my grandma that i promised her this beatiful tea set i had, it was Japanese but not souvenir-toristy type but real stuff. my grandma believed her and gave it to her.

i come back: where is my set? mind you only two hours passed. grandma got upset that friend lied, called her and told her to bring my possession back right away.

friend got mad and brought it back again (few hours later when again i was not there). grandma could not see well and said thanks. i come back: this is not my set! it is cheap made in China touristy stuff, not the real set i had!

then we realized that she probably took my set to the resale shop to make money out of it and brought whatever cheap she had at home (it was dusty) hoping that grandma won't see well.

it is funny every time she had an excuse to come over to take something when i was not home because supposedly i didn't like her. ha

Sometimes you can get your stuff back by saying,
"well, I guess I have no choice. I'm calling the police."

An old office-mate told me that one;
she said she'd also used it to get people to be kinder to their children & dogs, "well, I can see I'm wasting my breath talking to you. I'll have to call the law & see what they say about it."

I think there is a big big difference between loaning someone baby stuff and saying they can have it and you dont want it back. I know when I was pregnant my next door neighbors loaned me some stuff and gave me some stuff. The loaned stuff we gave back right away -- basinet as soon as baby outgrew it.

The main reason that I am hurt is because I really did not think he would ever ask for something he gave us as a gift back. Even with the clause of passing the clothes on to other people. It makes me feel like he is reconcidering why he even gave us the clothes in the first place because we do not see eachother on a daily basis like we did before. Now that he has a new friend he sees all the time at work he is taking back his gift to give to somebody else.

I havent had a chance to talk to him since yesterday but I know if I explain to him that we gave most of it away and this is what we have left he will be ok with that.

I guess its just the principal of giving somebody something and then asking for it back that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It makes me want to give him the items back and cut him out of my life because this is the type of person he is.

I, too, don't understand why this seemed "hurtful," or for that matter why you didn't feel comfortable just telling him you had passed the items on, as he had told you to do when he gave them to you. His having told you that doesn't make it wrong for him to have asked; think of it as if he had said, "Say, if you still have any of that baby stuff, can I pass it on to another friend who needs it?" So I would just call him back and say something like, "I looked in the basement [or wherever] and it seems I passed most of that stuff on already." Then, if you want, you can add, "I do have some stuff my child has outgrown, though; do you think your friend would want that?" I doubt he will bat an eyelash, really.

When my kidz were little, our friends and relatives and we just kept passing stuff back and forth all the time. We didn't even keep it separated by original owner, just by size, even to the point of sending both boy and girl party clothes (those are really the only sex-specific ones, usually) in the same bag, just to keep it all together. Maybe a very special outfit or hand-made item would come "home" eventually, but the rest just stayed in circulation. It just made so much sense.

My favorite memory of that situation was the famous Superman PJS that made it through NINE children (and maybe more -- I passed them on after my daughter, #9, outgrew them) intact, even though all the kidz loved them. Amazing that none of them injured themselves, because they had a velcro-attached cape, so of course they all immediately decided to jump off the bed and try to fly.