Sunday, August 31, 2008

Baby bag

The first time we left the house with our first child it took my wife and I 45 minutes to leave the house. My wife had a list entitled “Check List For New Born Diaper Bag” from a book she bought. I had gone online and found a check list called “absolutely necessary items for your new born bag.” The lists were not the same so we had to check each of our lists against each other. When there was a discrepancy between the lists we went with the higher amount. For the hour trip we had five diapers, three changes of cloths, two changing pads, three bottles (even though my daughter was breast fed) and an array of ointments.

Today we visited some friends who live an hour away and brought our third child. We were planning to stay a few hours so I threw in a couple of bottles. My wife had restocked the bag the other day. It was heavy when I tossed it into the minivan. After a couple of hours Baby Sammy started to cry, so we looked into the bag. There was a coloring book, two boxes of crayons, some mail we’ve been looking for, several toys and a diet coke. While there were two large bottles, there was only a half a bottle’s worth of formula. We gave Baby Sammy that and he calmed down. He wasn’t content but he was calm so we decided to stay for awhile longer. When it was time to leave, I went to change Baby Sammy since he hadn’t had a clean bottom in a while and his package was looking quite large. Baby Sammy doesn’t like to be wet. The crayons didn’t help. The toys didn’t help. Nothing in the bag resembled a diaper. We decided it was time to head home in a hurry. As soon as we hit the freeway the minivan started to be unresponsive. We didn’t fill the gas tank either.

We got off on the first exit that claimed to have a gas station. A mile off the freeway we hadn’t seen a gas station but saw many lovely trees. Then we saw the sign. It read, “Duck Crossing.” Rule of thumb, there are no gas stations near duck crossings.

1 comment:

Midwest Mom said...

The first time we left the house with our first child it took my wife and I 45 minutes to leave the house.

Ha! This is so true. My husband and I took 2 hours to sponge bathe the slippery little fellow the first few times. And let me tell you, we learned darned quick to keep, well, his little friend covered up!

How does parenting take well-adjusted educated people and turn us into jello-for-brains? Now that I'm 7 years into this crazy thing called parenting, I'm finally getting a bit of the brains back. (Thank goodness!)