I'm going mobile

This weekend Carrie's parents came into town and we took baby G to the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. This is our daughter's first big outing. We had previously only taken her to the doctor's office and once to my sister's house. Since this outing was substantially longer we needed quite a bit more stuff. Apparently babies roll pretty deep.

We had a stroller, diaper bag, baby carrier, pumping kit (well that was sort of for Carrie), a whole cadre of blankets, hats and a little baby snow suit. Basically we filled the trunk of the car and we were only going out for a few hours. After coming home we realized that we had over packed. Sure we needed most of the larger items but some of these things could have been combined into one single bag.

Our over-packed diaper bag included:

1. 15 diapers - She goes through about 8 diapers in a day and hasn't really been having diaper changes that go through more than one diaper at a time. Next time we'll reduce the number of diapers to 5. Still a little high but way more realistic than 15.
   
2. 2 clean onesies and 2 clean outfits - On the average day we only change her outfits once every 24 hours. She isn't getting out and running around and only when she hasn't pooped in days do we really need to worry about her soiling herself. Next time we'll drop this to one outfit and onesie.
3. 18 ounces of milk - Our daughter drinks about 6 ounces every 4 hours. Since we left right after her 10:00 AM feeding we should only have needed 12 ounces of milk. However, since Carrie was planning on pumping at the museum we only really needed 6 ounces because we would get more while we were there. We also brought a few ice packs to keep everything cold. She doesn't like cold milk and we had no way of heating it. We walked around with bottles of milk in our pockets for several hours trying to warm the milk up. Next time we'll do some better estimating and won't bring a cooler.
   
4. Snow Suit - We didn't need the snow suit plus the two blankets. If we really wanted to be sure she was warm we could have brought three blankets which still would have been less bulky than what we brought.
   

If we do manage to pack lighter we'll be alright. But once she starts to walk around on her own and won't travel without her favorite toys we might need to get a larger car.

A little note on last night. We fed her at 10:00 PM and put her to bed. She fussed for about an hour or so but then proceeded to sleep until 6:30 AM. Carrie had forgotten to set her 6:00 AM alarm to feed her. The new plan is to make the morning more flexible. We are going to let her wake herself up at whatever time (after 4:00 AM) and give her a full bottle then. Then when she wakes up for the rest of the day, just give her a snack to tide her over until 10:00 AM. This might end up with more sleep for everyone.