{"id":11644,"date":"2016-01-19T23:09:07","date_gmt":"2016-01-20T05:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/?p=11644"},"modified":"2016-04-20T12:39:13","modified_gmt":"2016-04-20T18:39:13","slug":"bags-for-every-occasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/2016\/01\/bags-for-every-occasion\/","title":{"rendered":"Bags for Every Occasion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bags for every occasion<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Let me confess to you my na\u00efvet\u00e9 about women\u2019s handbags of any kind. I didn\u2019t know that there was a world of high fashion bags until I was in my late twenties. Petunia Pickle Bottom bags weren’t\u00a0invented when\u00a0I bought my first diaper bag. When I became a mother, I went down to Kmart and bought a mint green diaper bag with pastel animals printed all over it. I had no opinions about diaper bags until I got home from that shopping trip.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Someone looked at my new bag and said, \u201cI\u2019ve always felt that the bag should reflect the taste of the mother, not her baby.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOuch,\u201d I thought, and never felt good about that bag after that.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There was a Louis Vuitton purse in my mom’s closet in 1997 that was a hand-me-down from my Great-aunt Susan. My mom didn’t like the purse and gave it to me. I was looking for a bag that could hold diapers without looking like a diaper bag since my mint green bag was juvenile, apparently. After a few months I realized that\u00a0this cavernous purse without\u00a0pockets didn’t suit my needs. It wasn’t attractive to me, so I donated it to charity along with some worn out clothes.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>Later, I learned that the bag was worth hundreds of dollars. (Facepalm.)<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

One of the most important bags that I have carried as a mother is the church bag. In the mothers\u2019 room at church I learned from other women that plastic bags, multiple changes of clothes, and blankets were necessary for the newborn. When babies became toddlers and didn\u2019t want to sit still, the church bag carried\u00a0anything that would entertain.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For a typical week at church when the kids were young I would load my long-handled, fabric church bag with our Baby Bible, a bag of dry cereal, sippy cups, extra pacifiers, diapers, wipes, and toys, toys, toys. We had child-sized etch-a-sketches, magnetic paper dolls, fabric swatches to make dresses on princesses, sewing cards with laces, Bible cards, Book of Mormon games, puzzles, and markers that wouldn\u2019t mark anything but their allotted book.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

When Mark was born, Richard sat on the stand each Sunday with the bishop during sacrament meeting. I had 4 children to keep quiet\u00a0on my own, so\u00a0I got more inventive. Into the church bag went Great-grandma\u2019s heirloom costume jewelry and porcelain dog. I let the children hold\u00a0these if they were very good. Many children can hold precious things carefully, and this is an exercise in reverence. I filled\u00a0plastic Easter eggs with small surprises. I purchased handfuls of hand puppets and finger puppets. I cut out felt books of stories from the Bible and the Book of Mormon.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t carry all of my tricks at once. I would\u00a0rotate them in and out of the bag week by week.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/span>If I took the time to load the bag with plenty of quiet activities,\u00a0not cars and action figures, the kids\u00a0were more reverent. I learned that cereals with a lot of sugar were not a good idea because the kids would be grumpy after they ate these. I tried to serve snacks in the hallway before sacrament meeting so we weren’t crinkling wrappers and the kids didn’t learn to expect food when we sat in the chapel. These ideas, typed out in front of me now, seem like basic wisdom, but I\u00a0they were hard-earned.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I have carried many bags over the years, but the diaper bag and church bag have been the most important. When I hear a young child upset at church I still look in my bag to find something to entertain. Unfortunately, my church bag just has pens and paper in it now. And it still doesn’t reflect my incredibly classy taste. Also, to those\u00a0young mothers who have a Petunia Pickle Bottom diaper bag, good for you. All of you. A good bag, well-stocked, whether it is pretty or not, can make all the difference.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bags for every occasion Let me confess to you my na\u00efvet\u00e9 about women\u2019s handbags of any kind. I didn\u2019t know that there was a world of high fashion bags until I was in my late twenties. Petunia Pickle Bottom bags weren’t\u00a0invented when\u00a0I bought my first diaper bag. When I became a mother, I went down … Continue reading Bags for Every Occasion<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,8,20,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-angies-memoir-project","category-church","category-life-according-to-angela","category-motherhood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11644"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11693,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11644\/revisions\/11693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.angelaross.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}