I love to travel and I love to plan. This has not changed with the birth of my girls. After baby girl was born we went out of town four times before she was a year old. We have not been quite as adventurous with the twins, yet. However, we did just drive up to Sesame Place in Langhorne, PA for a day. In this post, I will share my tips for how to pack for a day trip with little people.

Consider Your Destination

The first thing to think of is where you are going and what you will be doing. For this trip, I knew we would be outside all day away from the car. This meant that whatever we were going to need for the day needed to be carried with us and as compact as possible. This also meant I needed to consider having things to keep us cool in the heat or to protect us in case of rain.

I had already decided that I would be using my side-by-side double stroller for the twins. While it has good storage space the space is split in two so my big diaper bag does not fit. So the bag lady in me had a chance to shine. Before I say much more I think it is worth noting that I am a crazy over packer and not everyone will choose (or needs) to pack as much as I do.

With all that in mind I did purchase a few special things specifically for this trip. Both were for the comfort of the babies in the heat and I have already used multiple times since then. The first were these cooling infant support pads. The stroller I was using technically is not recommended for babies under six months and while my four month old twins have great head control, I wanted to get them a good support. It was a bonus that I found these cooling ones for 25% off. The other thing I got were a last minute impulse buy that happened to be a stroke of genius. I added these clip on battery operated stroller fans to my Walmart grocery order the week before the trip.  We basically had them running on the babies in the stroller all day and they (the babies and the fans) did great.

Consider Your Needs

While some things that we packed will be standard across the board for families with small children, such as diapers and wipes. Other things may be different. For example if you have food allergies you may need to pack more food and snacks than we did. As I mentioned above, my stroller situation required me to pack multiple smaller bags and pouches so I will give a brief overview of each one and what it included.

Diaper Grab Bag and Back-up Bag

Even in my diaper bag I use a grab bag. This includes a few diapers in both the twins and toddler size, wipes, diaper trash bags, diaper cream, and paper changing table covers. I also use a changing table cover that came with my diaper bag but I keep the paper ones in the grab bag in case I forget the other one. The back up bag was full of diapers in both sizes and was used to refill the grab bag.

Snack Bag

This was probably the least used bag of them all. We came back with a fully packed snack bag. I guess we enjoyed ourselves so much we didn’t need to snack. We had also eaten right before we left home and ate lunch fairly soon after we got there. But in any case, our favorite quick snacks are trail mix, gold fish, fruit, and pretzels. It is important to note whether or not your destination allows you to bring in snacks. I also included in this bag a bib and silverware for Baby Girl since I knew we would be eating lunch there.

Essentials Bag

This carried the important stuff like sunscreen, hydrocortisone, and a small first aid kit. My girls are very fair skinned so we use sunscreen every two hours like clockwork.

Bottle Bags

We pack our bottles pre-filled with water and formula in a pre-measured containers. Since there are two of them I needed multiple bags. I used insulated bags for this so that the water wouldn’t get too hot being outside all day. But obviously a warm bottle is desirable to babies so I wasn’t too concerned. I packed one more bottle then the number of feedings which I do in general. I figure if there is an emergency and we are delayed for some reason, the last thing I want to have to worry about it how I am going to feed my babies.

If you are nursing obviously you wouldn’t need a bottle bag, but you would want to research your destination to scope out where a good place to nurse might be.

Emergency Bag

I talked about my emergency bag in the post about going out in the summer. This was a smaller version of that with extra shirts for the girls in case of a messy meal. Thankfully everyone did fine and this was not needed.

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Thanks for reading!

Martina