to-do list

Tomorrow afternoon we leave for Kentucky, where we'll be visiting my parents for a week or so. Stu wanted to get in a full day's work, so he'll go in early and we'll pick him up in the mid-afternoon. The theory is that a good share of the driving will happen at night, so the kids can sleep in the car.

This means that the burden of packing and preparing for this trip falls mostly on me. I don't mind, really, but I have a lot to do in the next 24 hours:

1. Wash diapers. This will happen tonight, after Anya is asleep. We're totally out of disposables at the moment, so she'll be in cloth until the last possible moment.

2. Buy diapers. Daniel's potty-training is going reasonably well for right now (keep your fingers crossed, everyone!) so I have started putting him in pull-ups. I hate using disposables with him, but the last few months, the cloth diapers just haven't been working on him. They leaked so badly we were going through 3-4 pairs of pants every day. Between all that laundry and washing two kids' worth of cloth diapers every 36 hours, well, that's a lot of loads in the washing machine.

3. Laundry. I'm waiting until the last possible moment to do this (tomorrow morning) to make sure all the kids' clothes are clean.

4. Clean out the produce drawers in the fridge. I'm dreading this task. Something that used to be green and leafy has turned to liquid and a 2-week-old bag of broccoli is threatening mutiny. I should be dumping this stuff on the compost instead of blogging. Ewww.

5. Mop the kitchen floor. This could potentially wait until we get back, but I'm tired of stepping on mysterious grit and dried up oatmeal.

6. Pick up our CSA veggies this afternoon. We're going to bring them along instead of giving them to someone else.

7. Go to the splash pad. After an extremely cranky morning (they both got up at 5:00a.m.), both kids fell asleep at noon. We've been home nearly all morning, and they are guaranteed to get bored if we stay here all afternoon, and it's hot and yucky outside. Ergo: splash pad.

8. Get all of our food ready for the next 24 hours. I've already fixed tonight's dinner (risotto, but it's not exciting, since our only vegetables were onions and carrots), I've got bread started, I need to boil eggs for egg salad for the road. Tomorrow we'll probably eat pancakes for breakfast to use up the milk and the rest of the eggs. (This would all be so much easier if we ate fast food but the thought makes my stomach turn. I honestly can't remember the last time I ate something at McDonald's. Well, actually, I do. The last time I ate at McD's was on the way back from my last trip to KY, but all I had was a milkshake. I haven't eaten a sandwich from there in probably a decade or more.)

9. Try and fit a portable crib, a baby backpack carrier, an umbrella stroller, a cooler full of produce, a suitcase full of clothes, a camera, emergency toys, swimming gear, snacks and other miscellaneous things (such as the 4 of us) into a Honda civic.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Take it from someone who has been there: it is a lot more fun playing with the computer then cleaning up the kitchen.

-Chanterelle
Animal said…
I hear ya, Suze. Miss Tessmacher, The Rozzle and I are on Mackinac right now, and prepping for the trip (I'm fairly sure) required more tactical expertise than the whole of the Napoleonic wars. Long gone are the days of throwing a few days' worth of clothes into a duffel bag and hittin' the open road.

And, I couldn't agree more about the fast-food thing. My only sojourns to McD's happen in late Feb./early March, for the shamrock shakes. We usually stop at Arby's for lunch on the way up north, but this time something made Roz barf. Perhaps it was too much jamocha shake? Ahem.
Becca said…
Piece of advice if it will work for you--see if the grandparents will hold onto the portable crib for you. We had one that we left in Massachusetts for our visits in, and a second we could borrow from family in KY for our visits there. It wasn't something we used around the home and it was one less thing we had to worry about checking in when we flew (or fitting into a rental car when got there).

Added bonus--the one we left in Mass got lots of use from other little ones who came to visit, and those family members were veyr glad to not have to worry about bringing one.

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