The End of the Diaper Bag Years

Wednesday, October 07, 2015

Attika's diaper bag has been in storage for almost two years now. She's a four-year-old who prefers organic, fresh fruit smoothies over her own milk when we go out, so I don't bring bottles and milk organizers anymore. That's a lot of physical weight I leave at home, and I'm ever so glad! She has perfected toilet training {all on her own} when she turned three, so I only bring an extra diaper, just in case. I let her use a diaper when we go out so she won't need to sit on public toilets when the need to pee comes {poo HAS to stricly be done before we leave the house}. No amount of toilet seat sanitizer is enough to convince me that a public toilet could be made safe for kids to sit on.

Also, there's no more extra clothes, bibs and an extra of everything else like teethers, squishy books and toys.

If you're a mom of infants or toddlers reading this, I'm sure you have moments when you feel that a diaper bag is just too much. If you're a dad, moments of vanity may come rare, but a diaper bag would still do a lousy job in making you feel mirror-worthy.

Now that the diaper bag years are over, I am finally able to carry around a small bag when I go out, yes? NO. That's a no for two reasons. One, I've never had a penchant for small bags. Two, all the things that I "need" won't fit into a small bag. Whenever I see women walk around with those small handbags, it makes me wonder how tiny their purses and packs of tissues and notebooks and books and phones and hand sanitizers and knickknacks are. I have tried to reduce the number of things I put in my bag, but it felt like cutting off my oxygen supply. There was a time when I decided to leave my current read because I thought that if I had one less thing in my bag, that would make quite a difference. What difference would leaving one book really make? I was kidding myself. That decision made it to the list of my doleful life experiences because, coincidentally, that was the time when I had to wait in the park for Mr Young.

MY FACT-OF-THE-MATTER LOVE FOR BACKPACKS

The very first backpack I had was a red one that my father bought for me from his first trip to Hong Kong. The details escape me now -- all I remember is that he went there to receive a bank manager's award. I just turned 13 that time and not only was I obsessed with Madonna and my grandfather's dream-interpretation book, I was also obsessed with the idea of owning a red backpack. I was a small-town girl who always had my nose between pages of books, and even though my sister insisted that I was spoiled, I knew I rarely asked for anything. So when he pulled my backpack out of his suitcase, I thought I was going to collapse {or maybe I did. I was a very skinny girl who hardly ate anything, so who knows?}.

I have always loved backpacks for the useful and functional purpose they serve. It makes sense when you're a student because you don't bring just a couple of notebooks and one ballpen to school, do you? Although kids today lug around bags that look like mini-school buses, and that is scary as it is upsetting. Those gigantic bags say how much workload they have for each day, and I can't help but feel sad that they have to be under so much stress this early in life.

My red backpack stood by me until I graduated from high school. Well you know, some of the best things in life meet their end, too. In college, one of the first things I owned was a leather backpack by United Colors of Benetton. The love for backpacks just went on and on and I don't think there will ever be a day when I'd stop liking them. My most recent purchase from ZALORA is a handsome 6-liter red hiker's backpack, which I had to buy for my trip to Cambodia. That would be the third backpack I bought this year, and at this point in time I'm sure I've made my point on my matter-of-factly love for backpacks. Well okay, there's one more stop that I'd like to make soon. This stop actually means sitting on my favorite chair and clicking through one of the best online shops there is and doing my shopping on ZALORA. Jansport is continuously coming out with gorgeous designs and they're difficult to ignore, really. So... I won't.