Straight from the Travel Trenches

If you're visiting for WFMW - I know summer travel has pretty much ended, so I hope you will bookmark this for fall break or holiday travel!

Well, maybe not straight from the travel trenches, but I haven't been off the plane long!

We recently returned from vacation. For folks who normally drive just a few hours to any destination, the though of a non-stop flight across country was nerve-wracking. I need not have worried so much - everything turned out just fine. In the process, I learned a few tips to make our next flight even more enjoyable.

Lesson #1 - Only pack as much 'entertainment' as your child(ren) can carry. That includes my 3 year old (whose backpack ended up hitching a ride on the stroller handles, but that's not really the point). I packed enough stuff to keep the and entire plane full of folks entertained. It was more than we needed, and more than we needed to carry. My kids were both thrilled with the idea of playing Leapster nonstop for a few hours. A coloring book and crayons and a small magnetic game were the only other things they even bothered with. Add their blankets and loveys to the backpack (oh, and their 3-1-1 bags), and their backpacks would have been comfortably full without being too heavy.

Lesson #2 - Only pack as many clothes as will fit into a carry-on suitcase. Mister J could carry his (admittedly too heavy) backpack and pull his own small suitcase. He had more than enough clothes. We also had access to a washing machine and dryer. My need to wear a different shirt each day (so the scrapbook pictures would all look different) should not have outweighed the logic (and savings) of packing light. Our checked bag, paid in advance, cost us $15 each way. I wouldn't have minded having an extra $30 in my pocket, but we don't travel by air all that much - this was certainly a learning experience for me!

Lesson #3 - Bandanas make great handkerchiefs. I packed them because they are a great (lightweight) imaginative toy. They doubled as easy-to-locate hankies, since ours were brightly-colored. I tied the corner of one on the stroller seatbelt so Miss M could reach, but couldn't drop the one we gave her for her runny nose. It was easier than dealing with a travel pack of tissues, easier on her nose, and environmentally-friendly. (Remember, though, I had access to a washer and dryer).

Lesson #4 - I was so glad I made a point of saving some kid-sized plastic cups and lids from a local restaurant we visit regularly. I packed them, along with several straws, in my carry-on bag. They took up a good bit of space, but were much more kid-friendly than the open plastic cups that the airlines use for their beverage service. Just be sure to ask for the whole can of juice so you can share it between the kids!

Lesson #5 - If you are taking a long vacation or typically purchase a lot of gifts/souvenirs, plan time to drop by a pack and ship store before you head home. This felt a little excessive to me at first, but it is cheaper than checking an extra bag and is one less thing to haul/worry about. Our box just arrived yesterday, and the timing was perfect (we've had time to unpack, do laundry, and get back to our normal routine). Now we will unpack the couple of special things the kids picked out, I'll set aside the postcards and brochures I picked up along the way until it's time to put them in a scrapbook, and the box is ready to be recycled.

Lesson #6 - Be sure to keep a full change of clothes, wipes, and zipper bags handy in case of a potty accident, vomit, or any other incident that could leave clothes wet, smelly, or otherwise unwearable. Speaking from experience here - Miss M soaked everything but her socks when she ... Well, let me just say that in about 10 minutes, we had her clothes changed, soiled clothes bagged up, cleaned and packed her booster into its travel bag, and were on our way to check in for our flight. (Yes, I cleaned her up on the spot. Well, out of the way of the rental car drop-off line, in a relatively low-traffic area. Big J was mortified. I was praying that she wouldn't get sick again and that we could find something relatively mild among the meal options in the airport food court. And then I opened up one of the suitcases and found one more clean outfit to pack into her carry-on bag, just in case.)

I'm sure you have a few travel tips of your own - feel free to share them in the comments! And for more Works for Me Wednesday ideas, head on over to http://www.wearethatfamily.com.

My previous WFMW posts

Mom, I'm Bored!

Is your well of go-to summer activities running dry? We've got another week before school begins, and while we are trying to head out to the pool as much as we can before it closes ... I can't be there all day every day. Plus, I've got work to do! My 'real' work and my 'mom' work and various other commitments. So what's a mom to do? Hop on over to SimpleMom for 20 great suggestions (and a few bonus ideas in the comments)!

One-handed password

If there's anything that I've learned from having sick children for the past two weeks, it's that you should be able to type your password easily with one hand and you should have your browser "remember" you to avoid typing in your user id every time you log in to your various online accounts. You think that sounds awful, I know - that I would be on my computer while my sick child needs me. I've not done much more than hold kids for several days now - and the world keeps moving anyway. I get emails, I have emails to send, I have work to do - and I can do these fairly well while holding a sleeping child in my lap or snuggling next to me on the couch. It's just easier with a one-handed password.

Fright Night

You might have already guessed that with Miss M's food allergies, Halloween is particularly nerve-wracking for me. There's a great post from a mom of a food-allergic child over at Rocks In My Dryer, and I wanted to share it as a reminder to my readers of what we live with on a daily basis.

If you haven't already bought your Halloween candy, Jane Anne makes some suggestions about "safe" candy for food-allergic children. Non-food items (stickers, Play-Doh, etc.) are also good options.

I am sure that Halloween will become less 'scary' as the years go by and Miss M is old enough to understand her allergies (and why some candy is off limits). Until then, though, it's scary enough for me without the witches, ghosts, and goblins.

Reclaiming Some Space

I have reached the point where a change must happen. Actually, I want to see a lot of change around my home. I want to rid the place of all the clutter. I want to catch up on my kids' scrapbooks so I can toss the rest of the "stuff" I'm holding on to so I can remember the dates and times and places that go with all of the photos. I want to be able to park the mommy-van in the garage again. But first, I want to reclaim my space in bed.

Our kids know that if they wake up in the night and need something, they can come to us. If they need a snuggle, they know that they can climb into bed and snuggle until morning. There's plenty of room. In fact, that's why we got the gigantic bed in the first place. When Mister J was little, he slept with us most nights until he was around a year old. Miss M spent several nights with us early on, as well. (No shrieky-shrieky allowed - it's a personal decision, let's leave it at that.)

So why, with the gigantic bed and the open invitation for so long, have I changed my mind? Because the goal is really not about being selfish, it's about getting enough sleep be able to function the next day. You see, the kids are getting older (surprise!), and as they get older, they get bigger (I know, you are shocked!). And since they both seem to like sleep upside down and sideways in the bed, it gets crowded really fast. Plus, Mister J is truly a bed hog. I'm not making that up. Also, I'm kind of a light sleeper. It doesn't take a kick in the face wake me up (yes, that really happened), just one of the kids rolling over. So, with two extra people in the bed, trying to snuggle next to me from about 3am to real, sunshiny morning (around 3-4 hours), and me usually not getting to bed until midnight, I'm averaging around 3.5 hours of good sleep, and then 3.5 hours of crappy sleep. At that rate, after a few days, I should not be allowed to drive. Something had to change. And it did. And Big J was shocked.

I cleaned out the corner of the bedroom nearest my side of the bed. Then, I took a comforter that isn't currently in use on a bed and folded it into a kid-sized, bed-shaped cushion. I put that into the corner, along with a pillow and a baby quilt. Viola! My kids now have a place to sleep in the middle of the night when they come into our room. And I get a better night's sleep! And Big J doesn't get disturbed as much, either.

When the kids saw me putting the new kid-space together, they asked what I was doing (after all, I was cleaning, and they were perplexed). I told them what the new space was for, and explained that when they came into our room at night, this is where they would be sleeping now. Of course, they both wanted to check it out. They thought it was really cool. But the big test would come around 3am.

The first night, Miss M came into the room. She fussed about being tucked into the kid space. She wiggled and squirmed. In the end, we were up for the day at 6am, and I'm a 7am kind of girl.... When Mister J came in for his first try, he fell right to sleep and even slept late. Miss M's next time, she wiggled and squirmed and I gave in and pulled her into bed so I could sleep. On her next try, she stayed in the kid space and even slept later than her set-in-stone-no-matter-what 7am wakeup.

The best news in all of this? For the most part, the kids are staying in their beds all night. In the 2 weeks since we have implemented this new arrangement, I think the kids have come into our room a total of 5 times. They might not be sleeping all night, but if they wake up, they are soothing themselves back to sleep. And I'm sleeping like a baby.

A Sleeping Baby by Francois Boucher

Handwriting Practice

My son showed interest in writing his name about two years ago. Perhaps because the letters of his name are on the wall in his room, perhaps because in preschool the teachers write each student's name on all of their drawings and craft projects. In our house, when the kids show an interest, the parent pursues it - whatever it is. We have watched a Starbucks go up step by step - from the lot being filled and graded to paving the parking lot. We have discussed how GPS works, why people die, observed the effects of watering (or not watering) potted plants, and much, much more. So, when our son showed interest in writing, we started with the basics - his name. How difficult could that be?
Fast forward a few years to preschool - the 4-year-old class, to be exact. It's the year they start preparing children for "real" school - for kindergarten! And, it's the year they will be re-training my son to write using D'Nealian Manuscript, which looks like this. Not only that, I am retraining myself so that I can reinforce what he is learning. (I was taught the Zaner-Bloser or "standard block" style as I was growing up.)
It never occurred to me that there was more than to handwriting style than print or cursive. Lesson learned. Had I known, I would have researched the handwriting style used by our local school district before teaching my son to write his name. Also, I would have started out using an initial uppercase letter followed by lowercase letters. Not surprisingly, my son is resisting the move to mixed-case writing - and that's not to mention the move from ZB to D'Nealian. Plus, he thinks the lower case k looks like and upper case R, the lower case i looks like a lower case j (because of the little "tail"), etc. We have a lot of work to do! Thank goodness it's something the preschool teachers encounter all the time, so we have their help and encouragement through the process!

Two things!

Well, I still haven't remembered what I forgot, but I do have two little nuggets of wisdom-gained-through-experience for you tonight....

Nugget #1:
Miss M doesn't like to have her hair washed, and I can't (for whatever reason) get her to look up at the ceiling when I rinse her hair. So I tried this trick a while back when we were visiting my Mom, and Miss M thought it was pretty fun. I washed her hair "beauty shop" style! I knelt by the side of the tub, held her "football-style" cradling her head in one hand (over the tub, of course), and used the other to wash her hair. I used a plastic cup to pour the water over her head, and it stayed out of her ears and eyes. I've refined it a bit since then, sitting on the kids' stepstool or side of the tub and letting Miss M lay across my lap - she's quite a bit to long for the football hold, but when you are improvising.... Either way - it's much better than pouring water over the head of a screaming 2-year-old who is flailing about and trying to climb out of the tub because she hates having her hair washed!

Nugget #2:
We've all heard how kids are supposed to use fluoride-free toothpaste until they learn to spit it back out, but how do you teach a kid to spit out that sugary-sweet toddler gel? To a kid, it must be like liquid candy, because I have found my kids sucking it from the tube when I thought they were napping (we now store it out of reach in another room....). Did you ever notice that those baby and toddler gels don't make any bubbles? Besides the sugary taste, those gels also contain simethicone. You remember simethicone - it's the main ingredient in the drops you give babies when they are gassy. Well, the simethicone keeps the toddler gel from making bubbles, so what's there to spit out, really? Quite a while back, I found a children's fluoride-free toothpaste without simethicone made by Tom's of Maine. Once we switched to this toothpaste, I explained to J that he needed to spit the bubbles out - viola! The next time we went shopping for toothpaste, we picked out one containing fluoride. That was about the easiest transition ever - J thought it was cool to have bubbly toothpaste like Mom and Dad! The kids both like the flavor of this toothpaste - also a plus - and for some reason they don't actually try to suck this kind from the tube (yet another plus!). I've tried it a couple of times with Miss M, but she's not quite ready to spit the bubbles. No worries, though, since it's safe for her to swallow. I also like it because I'm using an all-natural product. Best of all - the dentist was glad to find out that J was using a fluoride toothpaste earlier than most kids his age - I must admit I was quite proud of that!

For the techno-mommies out there...

Here's a FREE podcast - you can download it from iTunes or listen here. There are lots of different topics, and you can even get some older 'casts in the iTunes library (go to the iTunes store, select podcasts, then select Kids and Family). Easy enough - and you get your daily dose of comfort or worry, depending on your personality type....

Tools Every Mom Needs

I'm not talking about a sense of humor, a cast-iron stomach, or enough band-aids for a school full of children - although these are certainly important. Nope, today I'm talking about a literal tool box. Whether yours is red, black, or yellow; metal, plastic, or just a cardboard box, there are a few things you MUST have:

• Tape - clear, for repairing books; packing, for repairing puzzle box bottoms. You will certainly encounter many more items that need taping - these are just the things on my "frequently repaired with tape" list. Notice I left off duct tape - it's only needed by men for on-the-fly repairs and boys of scouting age who are using it for the duct tape wallet craft.
  
• Batteries - lots of them, in all different sizes. More AAAs than anything, but also AAAs, Ds, Cs, and the occasional 9 volt. NOTE: If your toys don't sing, dance, read aloud, flash, or need a remote to perform, skip this one - but I bet you think this should be at the top of the list.
• Screwdrivers - assorted sizes. You will need them to replace all of the batteries, since every battery cover screws on. It's a great safety feature - especially since kids think batteries are a delicacy. I use a Phillips head (the "not flat" one) and a mini Phillips most often. Of course, you probably need a flat head, too - toy companies are always throwing you a curve ball - it's entertainment for their R&D departments. Note: You can get a great set of mini screwdrivers (3 flat and 3 Phillips head) from Walgreens for about 2 bucks right now. Another note: DO NOT get a cordless screwdriver. Although it's convenient, you'll just have more batteries to change.
  
• Pliers - needle nose and regular. Toys need some interesting repairs.
  
• Valium - For after you fix all of the toys, install all-new batteries, and listen to the singing, flashing, buzzing, dancing toys, and your child's gleeful giggles and squeals.
  

I'm sure there are many more things you must have. In fact, I know there are - I just want you to have at least the basics handy. My toolbox (red and black plastic, by the way) has all of these things plus: picture hanging hardware, assorted screws, fishing line, a small level, a ruler, a pencil, a pen, stick-on felt pads, stick-on cork pads, a mini wratchet-type set, allen wrenches, and more. I also keep a box in the closet under the stairs (i.e. - very easily accessible place) that's full of assorted batteries, wood glue, an extension cord, one of those measure-your-wall-and-mark-the-hanging-spot tools, and a staple gun, among other equally groovy tools.

So, what's most important? Screwdrivers, batteries, a sense of humor - and perhaps some earplugs.

The Princess Wears the Pants

My little princess is officially potty training now. We have the see-n-learn, cool effects, and nighttime pulls-ups now. We are stocked to the gills, and not buying diapers anymore. If my sweet little dear has any say, she'll never wear a diaper again (after all, the pictures on those aren't nearly as cool). I'm so excited by her progress that I can hardly stand it - but I hate to get too excited thinking maybe, just maybe, she will be in big girl panties when she goes to preschool in the fall. I don't want to jinx it, you know. But, she has woken up dry the past 2 mornings, and has even made it through her afternoon nap without wetting the pull-up! However, I need to pose a question to anyone out there reading. When my son was potty training, we called pulls-ups "Bob the Builder pants" or "Elmo pants" or "whatever-
character-was-on-them-this-time pants." For some reason, with my daughter, "Dora panties" and "Princess panties" just doesn't sound right in my brain. I want to call them "Dora/Princess pants" since they are not real panties. In our previous potty-training experience, the reason we called them Bob/Elmo/etc pants was to not say "underwear" - so the next step up could be really cool. Since, to me, the logical next step is "panties", what do I call them this time? Is "pants" okay? My friends, what suggestions do you have?

Mom's #1 Christmas Rule

Actually, this rule is not just for Christmas - but it most recently came up during some post-holiday shopping, so I thought I would give our biggest gifting season the credit. The rule is not actually for children - it's a rule for adults. And it's aimed at gift-givers and post-holiday impulse-shoppers alike. The rule is:

If it's more breakable than children, there is not a place for it in my house.

Not that I try to break my children - but they are, in fact, quite sturdy. As most moms out there have learned, it's not the actual child breaking that you worry about, it is what the child CAN break (which is most everything). Yes, this comes from the mouth (keyboard...) of a mom who is eternally baby-proofed. A mom who doesn't have a mantle upon which to perch the delicate, decorative set-abouts that most adults who have a home use to decorate (besides, my kids have already conquered the 3rd dimension). A mom who has no place in her home that the children are not allowed (that's how it was when I was growing up, so that's how it is in my home). "Where," you ask, "do you hide all of the Christmas gifts?" I'd answer that for you, but then my kids would figure out that I picked the least-interesting place in the house, and then it would suddenly become the most interesting, so I'm not telling you. And it worked beautifully this year, so I'm not sharing the secret. Not today, not next week, but maybe in 18 years... or whenever they figure it out.... In the meantime, I'll be teaching my kids the meaning of gentle, breakable, delicate, and PUT THAT DOWN RIGHT NOW!!!!

Rhinoceroses Can't . . .

At bedtime last night, my son was once again worried that rhinoceroses would come and get him. Months ago, when this fear first surfaced, I told him that he was safe, because his bedroom is upstairs and rhinoceroses can't climb stairs. This reminder did the trick once again, but his concern also reminded me of some of the other explanations we come up with to allay our childrens' fears. On the night he was concerned about giraffes coming into his room, I reminded him that a giraffe is waaay too tall to come through our front door. When he was concerned about lions, I told him that with that great big mane, a lion's head was just too big to fit through the front door. (By the way, there's a zoo on my front porch now - all those animals lined up trying to get through my front door.... And why, why, is a rhinoceros able to get in when the others can't? So, you'll find the rhinos in my dining room, at the bottom of the stairs that they can't climb, while everyone else is stuck on the porch.)

One of my favorite stories, however, was told by a friend whose daughter was also afraid of lions. She sprayed "Lion-Away" all over her daughter's room - night after night - to get her daughter to go to bed. And when I say everywhere, yes, you guessed it - under the bed, in the closet, everywhere. (Lion-Away, for those of you who have not heard the story, was just water in a spray bottle. Clever, eh?)

If you have a great story to share about calming your child's fears, please share so others can benefit from your idea!

Advice

I know you get baby advice from everyone, so here's a tidbit from me: see as many movies (in the theater) as you can before baby arrives. We aren't really big movie-goers, but we have only been twice since my son was born (he's nearly 4). You can take a baby a lot of places - but a movie theater really isn't one of them. So, now that you have an idea for something to do on Friday night, are there any movies in the theater worth seeing?