You'd Think You'd Be Better At It After 5 Years

It turns out that even after 5 years worth of practice, I am horribly useless at packing our baby bag.

I’d call it a nappy bag, but that’s kind of misleading.   This thing goes with us everywhere.  Leaving it behind is like leaving one of the kids behind, but worse – walking around with a stinky, miserable baby is no fun for anyone.

Technically I know that an organised Mom would have these essentials in her bag AT ALL TIMES:

• Minimum of 5 nappies (need to be prepared for disastrous teething nappies – because eeew)
• Wet wipes
• Nappy bags (scented)
• Bum cream
• Hand sanitiser
• A change of clothing (PER CHILD)
• Sun hats (FOR ALL THE CHILDREN)
• Sun screen
• Jerseys (AGAIN, FOR MORE THAN ONE CHILD AT ANY GIVEN TIME)
• Educational toys
• “Quiet books” that you can whip out for baby when they get agro in a quiet space – they then play happily and quietly with this for hours
• Healthy snacks
• Water
• Vaccination charts (because you never know when you’ll need to prove when your baby hit all those milestones)
• First Aid kit

I know this because when Seth packs the bag this is exactly what you will find in it.  With each item carefully arranged and placed in all of the secret compartments that the bag holds.  It will be immaculate and it will immediately make you want to send your husband to see mine for training because he has mad skills in this area (which most men apparently lack).

The problem is that Seth works a large part of the day, for the whole week.  Thus leaving me in charge of the nappy bag for extended periods of time.

This is a bad idea.

A very bad idea.

You know when couples have this balance thing, where the one is really good at something but the other is horrible at it so they balance each other out?  Well I think I might topple the scales on the untidy/disorganised side.  I am the female equivalent of the tazmanian devil.

To give you an example, this is how Knox left a messy playdate today:

In case you don’t spot it – that nappy was “borrowed” from our gracious host and those shorts are his sisters.  He is terribly pleased about this as you can see.  (Although admittedly he was actually holding himself saying “Mine” so who knows.  Maybe he was happy)

Out of all the very important nappy bag must haves up there, we actually had:

• Absolutely no nappies.  Because those are overrated
• A rouge pair of pink lined shorts
• Two half empty packets of wet wipes
• A dirty sock
• Vaccination cards that haven’t been updated since Knox was one (does that mean that he missed an injection?)
• Three jerseys that I threw in last minute before heading out the door.
• A single stinky, green (faux) Croc
• A packet of Woolies baby food – you know the long life one.  It’s Woolies, so that’s healthy enough for me.
• Dry khokis
• A T-shirt that is too small to fit any of them
• A half stocked First Aid kit
• Wooden puzzle pieces that we thought we lost weeks ago
• A half eaten Fizzer

And all of these were sticking precariously out of every single orifice that the bag has – all open and unzipped to ensure maximum chaos with minimum effort.

Needless to say that Seth will be very busy this weekend.