Every year about this time I get a burning urge (no, not that kind of burning urge) to empty my house. I alternate between packrat who saves everything that I touch because it is somehow imbued with personal meaning and some kind of freak ascetic who would prefer to have no possessions at all. Somehow this particular kind of schizophrenia results in moderation that I can live with most of the time.

This morning I went down to the crawlspace on the back wall of my office � a row of four doors hinged together that covers the entire wall. AJ came with me. We were in search of the carton of wrapping paper and the box of ribbons so that we could wrap a present for his friend R., whose birthday party AJ is attending on Saturday. But once the present was wrapped, I felt the burning urge to dump stuff. And dump I did. I pulled out all the things from the back most corners and threw almost all of them away. They were all baby things. AJ�s bathtub. His travel high chair. All his bottles and assorted feeding paraphernalia. The baby monitor. And most of my remaining maternity clothes � the vast majority of my maternity wardrobe has been traveling among my assorted pregnant friends and acquaintances. Every time I think I�m going to get it back, someone else gets knocked up and I know it�s going to be put to use once more. Given my own tendency, when pregnant, to spill things on my belly all the time, I�m pretty sure that stuff is ready for the garbage too. I have, of course, been saving all this stuff for �just in case�: just in case we have another child, just in case we need it. But opening up the dusty closet, I knew that even in the event of a big �what if,� I would not want a nice clean baby near any of that stuff, even if I bleached it within an inch of its life. Six jumbo trash bags full of stuff later, there is room to move in there.

AJ had fun too. He discovered his favorite baby toy, a fish with a spinning eye and a crinkly tale. He spun the eyeball around and around, stopping when only the white part was showing to shout, �Hey! I don�t have any pupils!� He has carried his fish back upstairs where he will, no doubt, show it to Getty, the real fish. Getty is likely to be unimpressed unless the toy fish comes bearing fish flakes.

I am now left in my dust-covered office with no more interest in cleaning. Time for laundry and some actual writing � my part of the taxes are done. Hurrah! All that remains is for my husband to check his deductions, for my IRS-agent relative to look it over, and of course for writing a couple of big honking checks. Later, AJ and I will dye the eggs that are cooling in their cardboard container on the kitchen counter. This will also, if years past are any indication, include the painting of AJ himself, who tends to fling the colors everywhere and wipe his face with fingers that are pink and purple and yellow and green. He has spent part of the morning reading about rainbows, so perhaps we�re in for some extra extravagance this year.

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