How to entertain a toddler on a flight

People often ask what to bring on a flight with small children to keep them entertained. When Littles was an infant, I used to pack a ton of toys in the diaper bag, but I found that the amount of time that they entertained her for was not worth the hassle of bringing them.

So now, I take a pretty minimalist approach. Littles is easy. She'll quietly watch DVDs the entire flight, so we make sure to pack the DVD player, the car adapter (we usually fly American Airlines, which has DC power outlets at many seats), and a couple of DVDs. We have an extra Zune at home and I keep saying I'm going to set one up for her with her music and movies, since that would be even more compact, but I keep forgetting until minutes before it's time to leave for a trip. One of these days.

Noob is much more of a challenge. Here's how I kept him entertained on our flight from Dallas to Miami on Thursday.

1:32 PM - After a one-hour delay -- prior to boarding, thankfully (I should do another post on "how to entertain a toddler and a preschooler during a flight delay") -- we settled into our seats. Noob and Littles both started checking out one of their favorite "plane toys," the safety instructions card:

1:39 PM - Noob started playing with his shoes. He loves taking the insoles out. That's his shoe in his left hand and the insole in his right hand:

Note the pacifier. We rarely give him one at home, and when we do, it's strictly limited to times when he's in bed. But it was pretty much a permanent fixture during this flight. You do what you gotta do.

1:50 PM - Takeoff. Noob spent a few minutes just looking out the window in amazement:

He started closing his eyes a bit. It was naptime, so I knew he was tired, but he has a really hard time falling asleep when there is stuff going on around him. I hoped he would fall asleep anyway, but no such luck.

1:55 PM - I packed three board books in my bag for him. He read through two of them:

2:03 PM - He was done with the books. Note how little happy-baby time I got out of what I brought. I don't think it's physically possible to carry on enough toys, books, etc. to amuse a child of this age for a reasonably long flight -- say, anything longer than an hour or so. Their attention span just isn't that long.

So we moved on to more "plane toys." We opened and closed the window shade:

This was his favorite game. (It was Littles' favorite, too, when she was his age.) I just turned on/off the overhead lights. Over and over and over. Whenever he pointed at one:

This game is really fun when you're on a plane (mostly one of the the larger ones that does international fights) that has the light control in the armrest. When we flew to England when Littles was 2 years old, I think she was fully convinced that she could actually turn the light on and off just by pointing up.

2:19 PM - The light on/light off game lasted longer than the books did, with no additional stuff to drag along in our bags. Score! Next, Noob moved on to playing with my phone. He's learned to slide his finger up to get to the keypad where I enter my password to unlock it. He hasn't learned the password yet, though. I'll give him some time. He's only 17 months old, after all.

2:31 PM  Hubby handed back a bottle of water (he and Littles were sitting in the seats directly in front of us), so I gave a little to Noob. Most of the water itself ended up down his shirt and in his car seat, but screwing and unscrewing the top gave him a few minutes of amusement.

2:44 PM - The water bottle started to create more frustration than amusement, so I decided it was time to stretch our legs a little and change Noob's diaper. This ended up taking quite a while, because I quickly discovered that the lavs at the back of the plane (near our seats) didn't have a changing table. So I had to wait for the beverage cart to clear out of the way so that I could access the middle lavs. Once I was done, I came out to find the trash cart blocking the aisle, so I had to wait for that cart to make it past our seats before I could sit down. That meant standing at the very front of coach/back of first class, with Noob wiggling and crying in my arms, for close to 10 minutes. Fun times. I'm sure the passengers in first class, in particular, were really thrilled with me. Or not.

3:05 PM - We finally got back to our seats. I could tell Noob was exhausted, so I tried to get him to sleep in his car seat, but he was having none of it. Hubby got up and took him to the back of the plane to see if he could bounce him to sleep. A nice thought, but Noob really just wants Mommy these days, so it wasn't working too well.

About a minute after they got up, Littles had to go potty, and when we came out, Hubby handed Noob back to me and said, "Here. He wants you." Being back with me seemed to calm Noob down, and pretty quickly, he started closing his eyes and laying his head on my shoulder. After a little more bouncing in the back of the plane, he was out. I returned to our seats and put him down in his car seat:

4:16 PM - Noob woke up as we were on our final approach into Miami. He was content climbing between his seat and my lap for a few minutes until it was time to fasten seatbelts for the final approach. Then, he looked out the window and played the overhead light game some more. That kept him reasonably calm and content until we were at the gate.

4:23 PM (5:23 PM local time) - We made it! Definitely not the most fun flight I've had, but I doubt a bag full of toys would have helped much, given that two books lasted all of eight minutes! Heck, even the shoes lasted longer.

How NOT to get a child's passport

Getting Littles' passport four years ago was a breeze, so when it came time to get Noob's, we thought it would be the same. Instead, we ended up doing so many things wrong that I realized I could write a post detailing what not to do when it's time to get a passport for your child.

1. Wait till the very last minute.
This page gives the current processing times for passports. As of this writing, it can take up to 6 weeks. If you wait till 6 weeks before your trip and then start the process... Murphy's Law will inevitably kick in, you'll hit a bump in the process, and you'll end up having to pay an extra $60 to expedite.

We started the process about 8 weeks before our trip. Plenty of time, right? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

2. Lose (or forget to request) the child's birth certificate
You need to provide proof of citizenship to get a passport, and by far the easiest proof to provide is a copy of the applicant's birth certificate. So, if you've misplaced your child's birth certificate, or if you never requested a copy, you'll need to do so.

If you still live in or near the county where your child was born, check with the county clerk's office first, as they may have a copy there that you can quickly request in person. Otherwise, you'll need to go through the state capitol.

Noob's birth certificate had not been sent to our local county clerk's office, so we had to go through Austin. We opted to have it mailed to us, rather than doing a road trip to pick it up in person. They said it would take 10-15 business days. It took 15 business days on the nose.

That put us at 5 weeks before our trip, so we knew we'd need to expedite the passport.

3. Lose (or forget to request) the child's Social Security card
You don't need the actual card to apply for a passport, but you do need to provide the application's Social Security number. So if you haven't memorized your child's SSN and you can't find the card, you'll need to get that straightened out before applying for the passport.

We have Noob's (and Littles') Social Security card tucked away in a safe spot in our house, so this wasn't a problem. Yay!

4. Just show up to your local post office to apply for the passport.
Not all post offices have passport facilities, and those that do may require an appointment. Check this page to identify a post office or other nearby facility that accepts passport applications. It states whether or not the facility requires an appointment and also gives the hours, but you should call to confirm both.

We knew our local post office did have passport facilities, and when I checked the page above, it stated that appointments weren't required. So we just showed up... and found out that they had started requiring appointments about two weeks before. When I pointed out that the website said no appointment was required, the lady told us, "Oh yeah, they haven't updated that website yet." Great.

She gave us the option of scheduling an appointment for mid to late June (for a July 7th departure!) or going to our city's main post office, which did not require appointments for passport applications. We chose the latter.

In retrospect, it would have been a better idea to call other nearby passport acceptance facilities, to see if any of them had appointments sooner... but we didn't.

5. If you don't have an appointment, expect to be in and out in an hour.
We arrived at the main post office at 9:30 AM. We didn't leave until after 1 PM. We packed the diaper bag and snacks for Noob, but left them at home -- oops. Luckily, I had plenty of time to run home midmorning to pick them up, because we definitely needed them.

6. Send just one parent to apply for the passport.
When applying for a child's passport, unless one parent has sole legal custody, the child and both parents need to appear in person, or one parent must appear with a notarized Statement of Consent. (Full parental consent requirements are here.)

Thankfully, we knew this, but woman directly in front of us in line did not. And so when she finally got to the front of the line after waiting for nearly 4 hours with her two kids, she was told to go home and get her husband. Ouch.

7. Wait till you get to the passport acceptance facility to fill out the application.
It's faster to fill it out online and print it at home. That also gives you the chance to gather all the required information ahead of time.

We were almost ready to leave for the passport office when I thought, "Hey, why don't I take a minute to fill out that application online?" Good thing, because we don't have Noob's Social Security number memorized, and as I mentioned earlier, it's required on the passport application. Filling out the application ahead of time saved us another trip home to get the card.

8. Wait till you get to the passport acceptance facility to take your child's passport photo.
Again, not all facilities have photo capabilities, and even if yours does, it might be hard to get a good photo with your young child. I explained how to make your own passport photos at home in a separate post.

After all that, we finally managed to get Noob's darn passport... so now we can forget about this whole process and just renew it by mail in 10 years, right? Wrong.

9. Forget that kids must renew their passports every 5 years, in person.
Adult passports expire after 10 years and can be renewed by mail. But kids' passports expire after only 5 years, and must be renewed in person -- essentially using the same process as first-time applicants. That means that we'll be going through this entire process again for Littles next year. I plan to not follow the advice in this post :)

Making a child's passport photo

UPDATED January 2012: We recently needed passport photos for our Chinese visa applications, and I discovered that you can use ePassportPhoto's free service to easily create passport photos. This replaces steps 6 and 7 in the instructions below. I've left them in here for reference, but I highly recommend ePassportPhoto now. See more details below.

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We are leaving today for Noob's first international trip! Preparations started weeks ago, because we needed to get him a passport. The first hurdle was getting a good passport photo for him. He is in a serious separation anxiety phase right now, so I knew that taking him to a passport photo place would be a no-go, because this type of expression is probably not acceptable in a passport photo:

"Hey! That's Mommy over there! Mommy! Come saaaaaaaave me!"

Instead, I did his passport photos at home -- just as I did for Littles when she got her passport. It's really quite easy!

Step 1: Review passport photo requirements
This State Department page explains the requirements for passport photos, so you'll want to start off by reviewing it carefully and ensuring that you understand all the requirements. Don't worry too much about the exact sizing requirements right now; focus on things like avoiding background shadows, eyes must be open, etc.

The Photo Examples page is also very useful, showing examples of correct and incorrect passport photos.

Step 2: Find a white (or off-white) sheet to use as a background
We use white sheets on our bed, so finding a white sheet is easy. The hard part is getting all the wrinkles out, since the background needs to be non-textured :) This was my first attempt at Noob's pictures. See all those wrinkles? Ugh.

Step 3: Set up the picture
Littles was about a month old when I took her passport pictures, so I just laid the sheet down on the floor and then laid her down on the sheet. Super easy!

Noob is much older and more mobile, so I had to figure out a way to restrain him for the pictures. I ended up draping the sheet over the fence in our backyard, then putting Noob in his booster seat on a chair in front of the sheet:

Step 4: Take the picture. And then take another. And another. And another...
Seriously, this is the great thing about doing pictures at home. I took over 20 pictures for Littles and over 70 pictures for Noob, all in the space of less than 5 minutes! Just keep shooting, because a lot of them will look like the pictures above, i.e. super cute but totally unusable for a passport photo.

Remember that your child needs to be directly facing the camera, so you'll need to get directly over a child who is laying on the floor, or crouch down to the level of a child sitting in a chair.

If you feel comfortable using the links above and the information on this page to get the sizing right on the pictures you've taken, you can skip the rest of this post. If you don't, read on...

Step 5: Download the pictures to your computer and sort through them, looking for one that meets the photo content requirements
You still don't need to worry about the sizing requirements in this step. Just for a photo where your child is looking at the camera, has a neutral facial expression, etc. If you can't find any, go back to step 4.

Here are the pictures I chose for my kids:

UPDATED January 2012: You can skip steps 6 and 7 below, and instead use ePassportPhoto to easily create passport photos with the right dimensions. All you have to do is upload your raw photo (like the ones shown above) to the site. It provides a photo editor with a box that shows lines denoting where the top and bottom of the head should be. You get the head in the photo properly positioned in the box, and voila! Perfect passport photo! ePassportPhoto then creates a 4"x6" image with four copies of your passport photo, suitable for printing (see step 8).

This saves a ton of time! I recently had to do photos for all of our Chinese visas, and it took me less than five minutes per photograph.

Best of all, it's completely free! The trickiest part of the whole process is finding the link to download the free copy of your passport photos. ePassportPhoto also provides a couple of paid services (which are a rip-off, in my opinion, as they cost the same as getting passport photos done locally), so you have to look closely for the "No thank you" link that allows you to bypass those and just get the downloadable image of your photos.

I've left the old steps for doing this in here for future reference, but I highly recommend using ePassportPhoto instead, if at all possible.

Step 6: Crop and size the photo
OK, this is where you need to start worrying about the photo sizing requirements. This page explains the precise sizing requirements.

For Noob's picture, I just used the good ol' Paint program that comes with Windows 7. And a little bit of basic math :)

Paint comes with a handy option to show picture sizes in inches, rather than the default of pixels. This is the Properties page under the File menu:

And it has another handy option to show gridlines on the picture:

I counted the number of "boxes" between the top of Noob's hair and the bottom of his chin. It was a little over 8 boxes. I knew from the photo composition page that in the final picture, this measurement needed to be between 1" and 1 3/8". I shot for the middle and tried to make it 1 1/4". That meant that each "box" in Paint represented 1.25" / 8 boxes = .15625 inches per box.

Going back to the photo composition page, the eye height must be between 1 1/8" and 1 3/8" from the bottom of the photo. Again, I shot for the middle and tried to make it 1 1/4", or about eight boxes. I counted down 8 boxes from the row containing Noob's eyes, and that gave me where the bottom of my photo needed to be. I've put a red line in the picture below to show this:

The cropped picture needs to be a 2" square, so 2 inches / .15625 inches per box = a total of 12.8 boxes. I rounded it off to be an even 13 boxes.

Of course, I knew where the bottom of that box was (the red line shown above), so I knew where the top needed to be, too. For the sides, I counted how many boxes wide Noob's head is (about 7 boxes), and then "padded" appropriately on each side of his head to get to a total width of 13 boxes (so, 3 additional boxes to each side).

Then I used the select tool to draw my square. My calculations were a little off and I had to add another box to the width to make things look right. That's fine, as long as the final square really is a square :)

Then I used the crop tool to crop out the rest of the picture:

Now I had a picture that should be the right proportions, but I needed to resize it to actually be 2" by 2". It would be really nice if Paint allowed you to resize to a specific size in inches, but unfortunately, it only lets you resize by pixels or percentage. So, I choose a percentage that I knew would get me close to 2" by 2", but would still be a little larger. Then I started resizing one pixel at a time until I get to exactly 2" by 2":

The final pictures for my kids:

Step 7 (optional): Create two copies of the photo
You'll need to have two copies of the same photo, so to save paper when printing, you may want to create an image that has the two copies side-by-side. To do this in Paint:

1. Press Ctrl-A to select the entire picture.
2. Press Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard.
3. Go to File | New to create a new blank image.
4. Go to File | Properties and enter the size that you want the new image to be. I knew I'd be printing on 4" x 6" photo paper, so I used that as the size for the new image.
5. Press Ctrl-V to paste the picture into the new image.
6. Press Ctrl-V again. This will paste another copy of the picture. It will be directly over the first copy at first, but you can drag and drop it to somewhere else in the new image.
7. Save the new image.

Step 8: Print
I printed a low-resolution copy on regular printer paper first, then got out a measuring tape and made sure that all the sizing was accurate.

Then I printed the final version on photo paper. You can find this at just about any store that sells printer paper. I even saw some in the check-out aisle at Dollar Tree a few days ago!

UPDATED January 2012: For Noob's passport photo, I printed myself, and it was accepted just fine. For our Chinese visas, our visa processing service recommended not using printed-at-home photos. Since we were in a bit of a time crunch to get the visas, I didn't want to do anything that might put us at risk of rejection. So I "splurged," and sent the images to Walgreens for printing. Normal price for this is about 20 cents a print, but there are always coupon codes floating around online that will give you a significant discount. I ended up paying a whopping 38 cents total, to print all four of our passport photos. Not bad at all.

And that's it! It does take some time fiddling around to get the sizing right [UPDATED January 2012: a lot less time if you use ePassportPhoto!], but for my kids, at this age, it was worth it to avoid the trauma of attempting to get a professional picture done.

Packing list: Camping

Here's what we brought, or should have brought, to our Memorial Day camping trip. I should mention that we were tent camping near a river in 100-degree weather, so those facts drive some of our gear choices :)

Tent
We have a Coleman 8-person Instant Tent.

Our campsite is pretty dusty, so the tent gets dusty too, within about an hour of arrival. Some of the other families brought a carpet or mat for feet wiping, or a Dustbuster to vacuum out the dust. Brilliant.

Air mattress and sheets for adults and older kids
Preferably not white sheets. It's pretty gross to see what comes off your body while you're sleeping. Don't ask me how I know.

Pack-n-play or other spot for sleeping for younger kids
Noob slept in a Peapod Plus on this trip. (We actually forgot our Peapod, and had to buy the Peapod Plus on the way down. I'll save that story for another post.)

Air conditioner, fan, or other cooling device
Hard-core campers will laugh at this one, but when it's over 100 degrees in your tent when your 1-year-old (or your 4-month-old, last year!) is trying to go down for his afternoon nap, you really need something to keep him cool.

Bumbo for babies
We don't use the Bumbo a ton at home, but last year, it was really nice having a spot to put Noob that was at least slightly elevated from all the dirt and dust at the campsite. I also saw a family this year that brought their Bumbo down to the river for their infant to sit in. (This goes without saying, but a Bumbo is no substitute for adult supervision in water.)

Noob keeping cool in the Bumbo, May 2010 (4 months old)

Clothing
It gets filthy, so avoid white/light stuff that you really love.

Swimming stuff
Bathing suits, hats, sunglasses, towels, water shoes (I just brought flip flops this year and those did not work well!)

Sunscreen

Clothesline and clothespins
Our tent actually has multiple clotheslines built in, which is handy. But clothespins are still needed to keep stuff from ending up all over the campsite!

Any required medications. Maybe vitamins to keep the weekend from being a complete nutritional waste? Maybe.

Toiletries
Toothbrush and toothpaste. (A mom can dream, right?) Shampoo and soap.

If I ever find an amazing deal on liquid hand soap, I'll stock up and put it in the bathroom at the campsite, because they never have soap and it's a pain to wash the kids' hands back in the "kitchen" at our campsite. (It is in a steep, slippery area that I'd rather the kids avoid whenever possible.) To that end...

...antibacterial hand wipes. Better than nothing.

Diapers (regular and swim) for the non potty trained
This was our third year camping but our first year doing cloth diapers the entire time. We're planning to use cloth diapers on our upcoming trips as well, so I'll probably do a post in September or October about traveling with cloth. For now, I'll just say that it worked out well. The one minor challenge was that the nearest toilet for poop disposal was a bit of a walk from our campsite.

Little potty for the recently potty trained
This was a new addition to our camping gear this year -- we didn't think to bring it last year, even though Littles was potty trained at the time. It worked out really well, not having to run to the campsite bathroom every time she had to go.

Food
On this trip, we always split cooking and cleanup among the families attending. This year, everyone just brought the food to make the meal that they signed up for, which worked much better than trying to coordinate a giant shopping list for all the meals (as we've done in the past).

We also bring snacks for the kids, in case they get hungry between meals or don't like what's being served. Stuff that does well in the heat is best, e.g. cereal bars, crackers, instant oatmeal. We also bring yogurt and fruit in a cooler.

Tip #1: Don't leave bananas in a car in 100 degree weather.

Tip #2: If you have raw meat in a non-vacuum-sealed container in a cooler, put it in a Ziploc bag or something, to avoid raw meat juice all over your lovely fruit.

Don't ask me how I know.

Water
Lots of it. No-spill water bottles for the kids, too. We have the straw cups with their names on them and that was perfect, since it was easy to tell whose was whose.

Booster seat for younger kids
At Littles' age, she is fine without any sort of special chair for eating, but our Fisher Price Healthy Care booster seat definitely came in handy for Noob. Bonus: I could easily hose it down after every meal. It doesn't usually get that good of a cleaning after meals at home, so it was the one item that came home cleaner than it was at the beginning of the trip :)

Baby carrier for younger kids
Last year, Noob pretty much lived in my lovely lightweight solarveil mei tai carrier:

I forgot it this year, and kicked myself constantly for that. It would have been so nice to be able to contain Noob (so I wouldn't have to worry about him wandering off from the campsite) while leaving my hands free. He probably won't need it next year, but I'll bring it just in case!

Toys
Obviously, nothing irreplaceable or non-washable. We brought a backpack full of random toys for both kids, and honestly, they got played with just enough to get completely filthy. Not worth it at all. We usually bring books, too, and they never get read. The only toys that really get played with are sand toys (shovels, buckets, etc.), water toys (water squirters, dolls that can go in water, etc.), and bubble machines!

That's all I can think of for now, but I reserve the right to come back and edit this post as I think of things over the coming year :)

Trip log: Camping

I know I haven't been posting a ton on this blog, but we haven't really traveled with the kids over the past few months, aside from our short road trip back in January. But now, finally, we've kicked off four-month stretch with three great trips planned! I want to do a "trip log" for each trip, to explain how we approached the trip and how it worked out. (I may go back and do trip logs for prior trips, too.)

Here goes!

We kicked off summer with a camping trip over Memorial Day weekend. Two of our friends organize this trip every year, and it's grown to include about 10 families, including some others with young kids.

We travel a lot with the kids, but this is probably the most challenging trip of all. Traveling with kids always requires a little bit of letting go, of understanding that sleep routines may be upset, that dinner may consist of just bread and water for a few days -- and that it's OK, the memories made are well worth the temporary upheaval. Camping requires a tremendous amount of letting go. The kids play in dirt all day long, and so the tents are filthy within hours of being set up. Bedtime is whenever the campsite gets quiet enough to allow for sleep or whenever the kids pass out from sheer exhaustion, whichever comes first, and usually, both occur well past bedtime back home. Meals frequently consist of 4 parts dessert to 1 part actual food. From a personal hygiene perspective, the kids are lucky if they wash their hands once a day; baths and teeth brushing are virtually unheard of. And you know what? It's OK. They survive. They have a blast. And we come home and take long baths and do lots of laundry and get a good night's sleep and all is right with the world again :)

Location: New Braunfels, Texas

Dates: May 27-30, 2011

Ages: Littles = almost 4 years, Noob = 15 months

Method(s) of transportation: Driving. We left after breakfast on Friday, stopped for lunch in Austin (about 3 hours from home and 1 hour from our destination), and arrived at the campsite early afternoon. For the return trip, we left after breakfast on Monday and drove virtually straight through, arriving home at around lunchtime.

Accommodations: Tents! We used a Coleman 8-person Instant Tent. Very easy to set up, and plenty of room for a family of 4 + associated clothes and gear.

Sleeping arrangements: Littles slept on her nap mat on top of a twin size air mattress. Noob slept in a Peapod Plus.

Eating arrangements: Littles usually sat in a kid-size folding camp chair. Noob used a Fisher Price Healthy Care Booster Seat. Since there were no chairs suitable for attaching the booster seat, we simply put it on the ground:

Activities:
Keeping cool in the Guadalupe River.

Playing in dirt.

Eating S'mores by the campfire.

Hanging out with friends in camp.

Key piece of travel gear: Air conditioner! "Real" campers might laugh, but with temperatures soaring to over 100 degrees inside the tent by Noob's afternoon nap time, I consider some form of cooling-off device to be a necessity. Most of our fellow campers brought fans. Hubby opted to hook up an old portable air conditioner of ours, so that it vented out a window of our tent. It worked very well, although I'm sure it wasn't very environmentally friendly! I could see ditching it in a few years when the kids are done with naps, but for now -- yeah, it's coming along.

Biggest challenges: Keeping Noob from walking off the cliff on the edge of our campsite. Keeping Littles from consuming too much sugar.

What worked well and what didn't: We brought along a number of items that made the trip easier. And we forgot a lot of stuff that would have made it even easier. I'll do a separate blog post with a packing list, since I think it would be handy to refer back to when packing for next year's trip!

Sleeping arrangements on the road

Noob sleeping in a hotel-provided crib, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (9 months old)

Ahhhh, sleep. An ongoing challenge for most parents of small children, even at home. Throw traveling into the mix, and nighttime (and naptime!) can become a downright disaster.

When traveling, there is only so much you can do about jetlag, missed naptimes/bedtimes, overactivity leading to overtiredness, and other kid-sleep-busters. But at least you can try to plan an environment that is as conducive to good sleep as possible.

Where to stay?
When traveling, we try to find places to stay that have multiple rooms, so that Hubby and I can stay up in one room while the kids sleep in another room. We've stayed in 1- or 2-bedroom suites at a variety of Residence Inns for this reason. We've also found places like the Douglas Fir Resort during our visit to Banff National Park, where we had a lovely condo with a separate bedroom. We put Littles to sleep in the bedroom and then hung out in the living room until we were ready for bed. As a bonus, many of these places also have a kitchenette, so we can cook meals at "home," rather than having to drag the kids out to eat at restaurants every night.

If we can't find a reasonably-priced suite-style hotel at our destination, we can make it work in a regular hotel room, too. It often means falling asleep when the kids do, but when you're on vacation, having an excuse to go to sleep early isn't always a bad thing :)

What to sleep in?
That depends on age. We have an Eddie Bauer infant travel bed that we've used with both kids up until about 6 months of age. I love it and I've been so sad when they've each outgrown it. It is lightweight, it folds up very small, and it provides easy access to a floppy newborn. Just be aware that the sides are relatively low, so it won't contain a crawling baby.

So, with mobile kids, we usually request a crib from the hotel. Hotel cribs get a bad rap, but in many many hotel nights, we've never had a bad/unsafe one. I do try to remember to bring a sheet from home, as some hotels will simply wrap a full-size sheet around the crib mattress, which isn't very safe for young infants.

I should also note that most hotels have provided a pack-n-play style crib, not a "normal" crib like the one you see in the picture at the top of this post. I don't think pack-n-plays can be fully sanitized, but honestly, it doesn't bother me, and we've never had a problem with it. If you're a germophobe, you might want to call ahead to see if your hotel does use pack-n-plays, and plan alternate arrangements if they do.

On occasion, we've stayed at hotels that don't provide cribs at all (such as the Old Faithful Lodge Cabins in Yellowstone National Park), or we've taken trips where we stay with family or friends who don't have cribs. For the Yellowstone trip, we actually lugged our own pack-n-play from home. I don't recommend that when flying :) Pack-n-plays are huge and bulky and generally a pain to fly with. (They're not too bad when driving, though. As I've previously noted, we usually do bring it on road trips.)

In fact, with airline baggage fees being what they are these days, you might find it is no more expensive to purchase a cheap pack-n-play at your destination and leave it there. That saves you the hassle of lugging the pack-n-play around, and if you're visiting someone who you might visit again in the future, you can leave the pack-n-play with them so that you have it for your next visit.

Of course, if you travel frequently like we do, spending $50 multiple times per year to fly with a pack-n-play or purchase a new one at your destination just isn't feasible. So we now have a Kidco Peapod, which is fabulous! It's a little pop-up tent that folds up small enough to fit easily in a suitcase.

 
Noob in the Peapod (with a few other accessories :), camping on the Guadalupe River near New Braunfels, Texas (4 months old). Here, he was using the Peapod as a playpen, but he also slept in it for naps/nighttime on this trip.

Besides its size, another huge advantage that it has over a pack-n-play is that the child can be zipped inside. So if you have a child who can climb out of a pack-n-play, the Peapod is a great option to keep him/her contained. In fact, Littles used the Peapod daily at her sitter's house once she started climbing out of her pack-n-play (at 19 months old).

We have the Peapod P101 model, and Littles fit in it until about 2.5 years of age, although it was definitely a tight fit towards the end. If you have a larger child or just want to get more use out of it, you might look into the Peapod Plus, which is a little bigger.

Littles now sleeps in the "big bed" when we stay in hotels. We make sure to get a room that either has two beds or one bed plus a pull-out couch. I will say, getting her to actually sleep in the big bed is usually a challenge. Too bad our suitcases are usually jam-packed with the stuff we need for all of us, or I would seriously consider getting a Peapod Plus for her to use...

Littles sleeping (at least in theory) in a "big bed," Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (3.5 years old). This was taken at about midnight, when we thought she had been asleep for hours -- wrong! She had been getting out of bed and goofing off all night long.

Top kid travel gear: Cosco Scenera car seat

Littles snoozing in the Scenera at Flagg Ranch, Yellowstone National Park (15 months old)

This post is part of a series on top kid travel gear.

Funny, we actually did not purchase our Cosco Scenera car seat with the intention of using it while traveling. We bought it when Littles was about 1 year old to leave with her sitter/nanny, so that she could drive Littles during the day while she watched her. We chose it because it is cheap (about $40 at Walmart) and gets great safety ratings.

But as it turns out, it's a perfect travel seat as well. It is lightweight, so it is easy to drag around the airport. It is narrow, so it fits easily in airline seats. It comes with its own handy bag for travel. And since it's cheap, I never worry about it getting lost or damaged while in transit. If that does happen, it will be no big deal to just buy a new one!

The Scenera does rear-facing from 5-35 lbs and forward-facing from 22-40 lbs. Littles still fits easily into the seat at 3.5 years old.

Downsides? There are a few:

1. The straps get twisted and stuck much more easily than on the more-expensive Britax seats that we use in our own cars. It's a bit of a pain, which is why we don't use the Scenera as our everyday seat.
2. The Scenera is less padded, although Littles has never complained about it.
3. We've found that it requires some sort of leveler (such as a rolled-up towel or a pool noodle) when installed rear-facing in most cars. We have yet to get organized enough to carry a pool noodle with us when we travel, so we usually end up rolling up a sweatshirt or coat to get from the airport to the hotel, then borrowing a hotel towel to get the seat at the right level for the rest of the trip.
4. While it is compatible with our older version of the GoGo Kidz Travelmate, it doesn't attach as securely as the Britax seats do. It's also not at all compatible with the newer Travelmate quick release strap.

Due to that last point, I think we'll end up traveling with the smaller of our two Britax seats (a Roundabout) on our future trips, now that we have the Travelmate quick release strap. But I sure will miss traveling with the Scenera. Having an extra seat for travel is a bit of a luxury, but it's really nice to not have to hassle with reinstalling the car seat when you arrive back home late at night and have two tired kiddos on your hands!