Have baby: Will travel...get packing!

As you may have noticed I've been relatively silent on the board these past few days. The sad truth is that all of my time has been eaten up planning for this trip. Now I have the enormous task of packing--for me, my son, my dog and essentially my husband too. He's at work all day then takes over managing dinner and the baby when he gets home; after we put the baby to bed no one can get into the bedroom without waking our precious sleeping angel.

Don and I are also super light packers. We share a carry on between the two of us and generally take little more than a personal item such as a purse and backpack. This is because normally we fly and don't enjoy the prospect of checking luggage.

This trip everything is totally different. By nature of having a car we can take whatever we want, and most likely it won't get lost. That said, it's a good thing we rented an SUV (yes, I know, the environment, the gas, etc. I am with you all the way on this one but a Corolla just ain't gonna cut it this time around.) From the looks of our kitchen table and the perimeter around it we are taking everything we own except the big dog, who is staying with a dog sitter.

On the plus side, since I am still losing baby weight (yes, it does come off, I swear!) I only have a few things that actually fit me, so packing for myself took all of thirty seconds. I just picked up the pile of clothes in the middle shelf in my closet and plunked them into the suitcase. Done!

Don, on the other hand, is going to have to fend for himself. I know he wears nothing but swim shorts and jeans (not together, although that would be an interesting trend) when we're on vacation but other than that I'm totally lost. I cleaned all his clothes so he could pick out what he wants and attempted to get his toiletry kit together. He informed me last night I did an almost perfect job--the only thing he needed to add was his electric razor, which he'll need in the morning anyway. Maybe I'm not so bad at this after all.

Then there's the baby, Professor Toots. In order to make things easy on myself I just packed everything he owns. All of it. There are times when he goes through one onesie a day and then days when he goes through about ten so I figured I'd hedge my bets and pack them all.

Did I mention he'd going through a growth spurt right now? That means I also need to pack some bigger items so he can have something to fit into on the way home. You think I'm kidding but this kid just measured in at 26 inches long (or so Don says). And he's three months old. Sheesh.

His clothes take up no room at all, but all his other stuff has taken over the Ford Escape. The diapers, the changing station and pads, etc., the blankets and burp cloths, the toys and books--yes, he loves books. We read them every day and he seems to really dig them, especially Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? It's a total classic.

Then there's his infant carrier, which fits into a base becoming a car seat, his stroller, which also fits his infant carrier, the pack and play, in which he sleeps (thank Pete that collapses), the baby bjorn, the My Breast Friend for breastfeeding, all the breastfeeding equipment (I could open a store), and, and and and....

Is that it? Did I list it all? Oh, right: and bibs. This kid is now the drooling champion of Brooklyn. And all our food. Since we don't know if we'll be able to stop anywhere for a sit down meal I went to Fairway and spent $200 on water and portable non-perishables. And I plan to eat all of it. All of it.

So, it's now 4:50 PM and I am still packing. I am almost finished but I still have to get the trivia cards in case we get tired of talking about how cute the baby is (bound to happen sometime) and a few last minute odds and ends that you can't pack until your post 3:15 AM shower.

I just hope we have room left for ourselves, the dog and the baby...and for all the stuff my parents think we're bringing back with us. We have a mirror that was a wedding gift, a picture my grandparents gave me that is actually worth a lot of money and shouldn't be tucked away in my mom's basement, all my father's records, the music I grew up with that shaped me into the kind of person who wants to drag a three month old to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and about a million bottles of booze that my father has been collecting since the dark ages and never managed to drink because he's a beer man. There's some good stuff in there too: Chivas Regal, Johnny Walker, and undoubtedly some of Kentucky's finest.

As much as I could procrastinate by writing this blog forever, I had better get back to those odds and ends. After all, I plan on going to bed by the second inning of the Mets game so I can get up at 3:00 AM with the baby and not fall asleep in the shower (which needs to be cleaned for the dog sitter. Sigh. My work is never done.)

The next time you hear from me I should be on the road. Just pray there's plenty of free WiFi.