Things that are awful #92: Packing

I had a post that was about 95% completed to post on Christmas, and then I forgot to finish/post it. So, um. I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas! Now here's some random whining...

Ever since I was a kid attending summer camp, I've had this problem with packing. If I don't finish packing more than a week before I have to leave to go somewhere, I start having dreams that it's time to leave and I suddenly realize I haven't packed anything. Or I've packed all the wrong things. (A week before my wedding, my brain took a break from wedding-disaster nightmares [ie, It was our wedding day and I realized I had forgotten to book a reception venue. Our organist couldn't come because his wife was in labor, so his brother filled in, but the only song he knew how to play was "Jingle Bells." Our whole wedding party changed into muddy jeans and sweatshirts right before we were supposed to have photos taken,] to dream that we arrived at our honeymoon resort, I opened my suitcase, and I realized I had only packed socks. Just a suitcase full of socks.) So I have to start packing ridiculously early to stave off the nightmares.

And I have to pack everything. EVERYTHING. I always pack more clothes than I could possibly wear even if I changed three times a day. For a weekend trip, I pack enough underwear to last me for a month. Because you can never have too much underwear. You just can't.

Yes, there really is a suitcase under there.

(I periodically see article/blog posts/Pins with titles like "How to pack for two weeks using only your carry-on" or "Pack enough outfits for a month with only six items of clothing," and I laugh and I laugh, because I can only assume they were written as jokes.)

And now that I'm a mom, it's gotten worse. Because in addition to thinking things like, "But what if I only bring gray yoga pants and then I suddenly really, really want black ones?" I now have this whole other person to overpack for. "I already packed the blanket that says "Lucas" on it, but what if it's bedtime, and he decides he needs the guitar blanket? I'm bringing his sweatpants and khakis and cargo khakis and jeans and athletic pants and fleece pants, but what if there's an occasion that demands corduroys?" Like I said, I have a problem. The ultimate in packing anxiety happens if I'm flying, because airlines have this rule that your suitcase can only weigh 50 pounds or less, and if it weighs 51 pounds, you have to pay a million dollars (give or take.) Which makes it very hard to pack all of the shoes you own, just in case.

Anyway, my newest strategy that is (kind of, maybe, just a little bit) helping me to be ever-so-slightly less ridiculous is that I pack everything Lucas and I own (like always,) but then a day or two before it's time to leave, I take everything out of the suitcase, and then before I put each item back in, I ask myself questions like, "Ok, but do I really need eight pairs of pajama pants?" (Answer: yes.)

There's really no point to this post other than for me to whine a little bit. But if you have any awesome packing tips, please share them in the comments! As long as the tips aren't things like "You should only pack one pair of pants and two shirts." Because you'll give me nightmares.

A few highlights from my day yesterday...

I was going to post this last night in the midst of my frustration, but my internet stopped working for no good reason. Of course.

Yes, I blurred out my friend's face. Not because she's anonymous but because it's a ridiculous picture that she took as a joke, and she's coming over to my house today, and I don't want her to hit me.

But on the bright side...

If you click the mommy below, I will not fling a cookie at you with a spatula.

I'm a failure at sippy cups.

You wouldn't even think that was a thing, but it is. And if anyone could be it, it's me.

Lucas never really took a bottle (I think the most he ever drank from one was half an ounce), so when it was time to introduce him to drinking water, I just skipped over bottles and went straight to sippy cups - the ones with the soft spout. So when our pediatrician said that you were supposed to wean babies off of bottles at age one because of something to do with the way a baby's teeth develop, I zoned out and thought about something more relevant to me - like chocolate - because Lucas never took a bottle anyway. And then a few weeks ago, a friend of mine noticed that I was still giving Lucas a sippy cup with a soft spout, and said that those are a no-no after age one, too. Drat!

The only non-soft sippy cups we had were some that are "designed" so that you can either keep reusing them or just throw them away, which translates to, "nobody really wants to use these cups more than once anyway, because the lids come off super easily and the cup will flood your kitchen floor if your kid so much as taps it, so you might as well just throw them out right after you buy them."

So we went to the store and spent much longer than could possibly be considered normal trying to pick out new sippy cups. And of course by that I mean that I stared at the sippy cups for a really long time while Dan did something else that didn't involve staring at cups, and then finally I asked him to pick between two different kinds, and he picked one, and then I was pretty sure he picked the wrong one.

We brought home two different kinds, both of which claimed to be non-spill. (To be fair, one didn't actually say it was non-spill, but it had a picture of a drop of water on it with a red circle and a line through it, which either means "non-spill" or "don't put any liquids in this cup." In retrospect, it probably meant the second thing.)  One cup had no spout or straw, but was "revolutionary" and "orthodontist recommended" because it was "lip-activated." The idea is that it looks like a regular cup with a lid on top, and then when your child puts his mouth over the rim of the cup, the top presses down and water comes out. Lucas did not figure out how to drink out of it, but it took him all of four seconds to figure out how to turn it upside down and press on the lid so that the water poured onto the floor.

The other kind of cup seemed like a pretty standard sippy cup, so I gave it to him for dinner and then again at bedtime. Sometimes he likes to take his sippy cup to bed with him (he only drinks water from his cup, so there's not a concern about his teeth rotting out of his head if he falls asleep with a cup in his mouth), so when I put him to bed, I let him keep his cup. Since I'm blogging about it, you've probably figured out that this was a bad idea.

Half an hour after I put Lucas to bed, he started crying loudly and calling for me. I went in and picked him up, and... he was drenched. Like, "just fell into the bathtub fully clothed" drenched. As was his bed. So apparently the whole "non-spill" thing was just a cruel hoax played on unsuspecting moms just for laughs. Any mom of a toddler (or former toddler) can tell you that there's no such thing as getting your child out of bed, changing his pajamas and diaper, changing his sheets, and then putting him back to bed and having him actually sleep. He ended up falling asleep a full hour and 45 minutes after his bedtime.

So I'm still in the market for new sippy cups for Lucas. In the meantime, hopefully I'm not screwing his teeth up. Although there's a good chance he'll inherit my teeth that required surgery and three years of braces before they looked semi-presentable, so he might be out of luck anyway.