What’s in my bag?
We had such a lovely day out this weekend. We visited Gullivers Dinosaur and Farm park in Milton Keynes with some friends who have children about a year younger than Pickles and Puds. They get on so well and play beautifully, and the parents are old friends of ours, so it's always a guaranteed good time when we get together.
There were a few times today when some unusal items were called for, and low and behold, my rucksack of wonders held them. There was an emergency splinter removal, so I looked in my first aid kit (yes I have one, it includes wound dressings, steri strips and alka seltzer, because you never know!) and was able to supply two types of tweezer and a calpol syringe for the removal of the splinter, then germolene and owl patterned plasters for aftercare.
Later on we were treating ourselves to ice lollies and I was able to avoid too much mess with the ice lolly holders I pulled from my bag (summer staple in our house hold, I highly reccomend them). The lolly stick fits in a special slot, the little dish collects the drips, and then the kiddies can drink the liquid through the built in straw. Clothes and fingers avoid getting too sticky, melted ice lolly bits get caught, and no one throws a tantrum because their ice lolly fell on the floor. Everyone is a winner.
While out for dinner I was sharing around the supply of little wind up toys I keep in a pouch to entertain impatient, bored children, and realised I had left the kids drinks bottles in the car. This is not a problem for Pickles, but Puds is still working on his technique for drinking from a regular cup, so I pulled out my trusty silicone straws for him to drink from and crisis averted! It was at this point that my friend said to me that she can't believe how organised I am, and that I think of everything. I'm sure reading the above it certainly seems like I am boasting of my prowess as a "perfect parent", but let me assure you, there are often days when I forget to pack most of this stuff, and also that it has taken me five and a half years of mistakes with Pickles and Puds to get to this point.
I have a photo of Puds, not yet a year old, sitting naked apart from a nappy and socks on the floor of a community centre hall, because during Pickles ballet lesson he had decided to have a gigantic poo explosion that destroyed his outfit, and I in my infinite wisdom had only brought a nappy and an empty wipe packet with me. I had to use his pooped on clothes to clean him up and throw them away (they were beyond saving anyway).
He also gets very travel sick, and once threw up just as we pulled into Sainsbury's car park. Despite knowing how sick he gets I had nothing to change him into, so had to clean up as best I could with the tissues and baby wipes I had in the car (the rubbish island floating in the Pacific is not going to like me for that one), then strap his thankfully still clean coat over his naked body, and hide his bare legs in the cosy toes until I could ransack the TU section for emergency clothes. It was the middle of winter. He refused to keep the cosy toes on and decided then was the time to work out how to undo the zip on a coat. I received MANY frowns and tuts from other people that day. I now keep a full "sick kit" in the car consisting of a change of clothes, spare car seat cover, anti-bac spray, and microfibre cleaning cloths.
The reason I have tweezers in my first aid kit was because when Pickles was a baby I and some other mummy friends had taken our little ones out for a picnic in the park, and while she was sleeping a wasp had stung Pickles on the arm. She woke up with a start and swatted it as it tried to fly off. It's front half managed to escape, but Pickles had somehow managed to have the wasp's bum left dangling from her skin. Now there is one vital piece of information you need to know about me here. I am terrified of wasps. I try so hard not to show it in front of the kids, but it's not easy. I hate them all. Them and their steriod pumping cousins, hornets. So I panicked. I had no idea how to get this sting and wasp bum out of her arm, all logical thought left me, and my brain melted into a pile of jelly. Lucky for me one of the other mums kept a much cooler head and sorted it out, but since then I have always carried tweezers just in case.
My point is that I carry a lot of random crap in my bag and it certainly helps me appear to be a "perfect mum". But it's taken me a lot of hard learning to get to this point. So next time you are out and maybe feeling a bit deflated in the shadow of the mum or dad that pulls out a full entertainment kit for their kids in a restaurant, or several outfit changes for their child that has jumped waist deep in a puddle, don't feel resentful or down on yourself. Instead try to imagine the kind of hellish tantrum they had to endure previously in front of the judgmental eyes of the general public, or the meltdown of the soggy wet child who had to travel home freezing cold because they wouldn't bloody listen to their parents who had said no splashing without your wellies. Imagine what they had to go through to force themselves into that kind of preparation in the future, so they wouldn't be caught out for the umpteenth time.
On that note, I must remember to restock my supply of single dose calpol sachets in my bag. It was the one thing we could have really done with, and the one thing I didn't have. Bloody typical.