Our stuffed HIghlander. Can you spot the baby??
I mentioned in my 11-month letter to Emma that I was a little freaked out about taking a week-long vacation with her — there were just so many things to worry about! And so, to mitigate my pre-trip freakout as much as possible, I packed. I packed a LOT. I packed so much that we had to put down one of the back seats to help fit everything in, so I guess it’s good that we only have one kid because there would’ve been no room for anyone else.
To be fair, I suspect that at 10.5 months old when we went to Port Aransas, Emma is smack in the middle of the period of maximum “stuff.” She still drinks formula from bottles, but also eats a mix of baby food and table food. She sits up, but can’t sit on her own at a dining table. She sleeps well, but can’t sleep on a bed (well, unless we co-slept, but we’ve never done that and I didn’t want to try it on vacation). You get the idea.
So she uses a lot of stuff these days. But as you can imagine, while several items I packed were quite useful, others were a total waste of space.
Useful Stuff!
Pack-and-play. I’ll start with the obvious — like I said, she needed somewhere to sleep and we don’t co-sleep, so we took our pack-and-play. This was the largest single item and after Emma’s first 6 weeks when she slept in it next to our bed, we haven’t used it much. But I guess when you need it, you need it, and I was glad we had it. I was worried Emma wouldn’t like sleeping in a new place and a new “crib” but she was totally fine. Yay!
Booster seat. We don’t actually have a high chair, so this booster seat is what we also use at home. The back folds down to make it somewhat more compact, although it’s still fairly bulky. But the straps are long enough that it could be attached to a more armchair-like chair in the condo. You can see it in the background below.
Picnic blanket. I picked this up on a whim at Target on Friday morning mere hours before we left for Port A. It seemed like it might be useful at the beach, but instead we used it in the condo all week. The condo was nice enough but the carpet…well, the carpet wasn’t the cleanest. After a day of crawling around, Emma’s knees and feet were black with dirt. Ick, right? So we rolled this baby out on the floor and it gave her a slightly cleaner surface to play on…at least part of the time.
Small multi-part toys and non-“toy” toys. They don’t take much space when packing but expand to provide lots of entertainment. This set of stacking cups, which Emma loves, is the perfect example — it’s small when nestled together, but she can play with each one, bang them together, knock them over when I stack them up, chew on them, etc. We also took this cookie jar, which isn’t super compact but provides the same type of multifaceted entertainment — taking the pieces out, putting them back in, and more. And, like any other baby, Emma also likes to play with things that aren’t technically toys — plastic bottles (which we had from water and cokes), pots and pans and plastic bowls (included in the kitchenette), clothes (like my swimsuit coverup in the photo above) and basically whatever else she can get her hands on.
Bottle brush. Our condo had a kitchenette, but a dishwasher wasn’t part of that — so I was glad that I’d brought the bottle brush for washing the bottles by hand. In the future, I’ll remember that it’s definitely worth checking out what we will/won’t have ahead of time.
Changing blanket. We got this one as a gift and it has been useful in a lot of situations. Emma still has the occasional blowout or just really messy diaper, and it was nice to have this laid out on a bed so that we didn’t risk getting poop on the bedspread that we’d have to live with all week. (Although come to think of it, a bath towel from the condo would’ve done basically the same thing.)
The obvious stuff makes up the rest of the “useful” list — sunscreen, diapers, bottles, formula, food. I packed a week-long supply of all of this since we had room in the car, and since it was cheaper to stock up at Target before leaving. But it took up a lot of space, and we essentially had a entire laundry basket full of “consumables.” (At least it meant we had less to pack on the return trip!) If we’d flown, I would have bought all this on arrival like we did when we went to Charlotte in April.
NOT Useful Stuff
Stroller. We packed our BOB because obviously we would need it, right? Wrong! It took up a lot of space — almost as much as the pack-and-play — but we didn’t use it a single time. I wouldn’t have believed that if you’d told me ahead of time. In retrospect, I guess the necessity of a stroller really depends on what your plans are. The primary reason I lugged it along is that I thought we’d take walks. But it was too hot to walk anytime other than early morning or late evening, and with Jose’s mom available to stay with Emma, it was just easier to leave her at the condo.
Twice as many clothes as actually needed. It turns out that Emma doesn’t actually make much of a mess while eating, and I’d taken a couple bibs to mitigate that even more. And though I took the changing blanket just in case, blowouts are fairly rare these days. Emma wore a different outfit each day and could have gone at least 4-5 more days without a repeat. Fortunately, baby clothes don’t take up much room so overpacking wasn’t a huge impact.
Burp cloths. I took 3 and they stayed in the bag. Like I just said, she doesn’t actually make much of a mess while eating or drinking, at least for now. We just don’t need burp cloths at the ready like we used to.
Baby towel and washcloth. We use these at home, but what made me think I needed to take them to Port A instead of just using a normal bath towel provided by the condo? Who knows.
I can only imagine what travel will be like once Emma eats and drinks normal food from normal cups and plates — and when she no longer needs diapers! But for now, I’ll just do my best to ignore my pack rat tendencies…