Lesson Learned-The Diaper Incident

The two most important parenting lessons I have learned over past months are 1) Be Flexible and 2) Be Prepared.  Yesterday, I slacked on less number #2 which required my budget to learn lesson #1.

I have been well initiated into the parenting club with many public diaper blowouts.  Back when Max was born I always had an obscene number of wipes and extra outfits in my diaper bag.  As he’s gotten older I’ve started to slack.  I got complacent.   Since Max started solid foods, diaper blow-outs weren’t really a concern. In fact, without getting into too much public detail about my son’s BM’s, I was usually cheering any dirty diaper that occurred.

Well, that came back to bite me yesterday.  My dear friend Jess was in town for the weekend so on Sunday we heading downtown for lunch and site seeing. It was a gorgeous and mild day and Jess, being a Yankee, soaked up the sun and the 76 degree weather.  Max was on his best behavior.  Everything was perfect.

Before heading home, we stopped to give Max a bottle.  Immediately after finishing, we heard the familiar grunt letting us know it a diaper change was needed. The villagers rejoiced that Max could finally eat bananas without consequence. There weren’t any public bathrooms with changing tables nearby so instead we found a secluded bench and commenced the changing.  It was there we discovered this wasn’t any regular diaper.  This was the mother of all diapers and it was EVERYWHERE.  We also discovered I had a limited amount of wipes and no spare outfit.

Jess ran to the CVS up the street for wipes while Brett and I cleaned off Max the best we could while gingerly taking off the ruined outfit (which was ugly anyway) Exhibit A:

Cute kid, ugly, ill-fitting, jumper

As we didn’t have another outfit we just wrapped the poor kid up in a blanket. 

Brett ran ahead to get the car while Jess and I walked to meet him half way.  I hung my head in shame as people looked with disdain at the half naked baby.  Then I saw it.  The downtown Baby Gap! Hooray!  My child wouldn’t need to spend his ride home mostly naked.  Five minutes later, Max had a new, ridiculously overpriced thermal onesie.  The sales girl was sympathetic.  I could tell I wasn’t the first parent that rushed in with a naked kid and said “I’ll take anything warm and under $100”.  I didn’t spring for pants though.  Just the onesie.  Pants are overrated and I’m not a millionaire. Instead, he had a blanket. Exhibit B:

Mom is too cheap for for pants.

So, lesson learned.  Restock the diaper bag regularly and be sure to carry a spare outfit.  Also, just in case, increase the spending limit on the credit card.  Emergencies are expensive.