Gearing up for summer travel has got me thinking. I’m thinking about sleeping.

Tiny babies: Believe me, anyone who weighs less than 15 lbs does not require a real bed. Newborns can sleep in their bucket-style infant car seats overnight. (Or not sleep, as the case may be.) I also like to give a little dose of infant massage right before bed in a strange place to really knock the baby out.

Big babies and toddlers: I love the pack 'n play style travel cribs. If driving, go ahead and shove it in the trunk. If flying, borrow or rent one at your destination. Bring familiar security objects and sheets from home to make the bed on the road smell and feel more like home. We also travel with a white noise machine to cover those mysterious travel noises.
 
Big toddlers and preschoolers: Let the fun begin! If we’re traveling to friends’ homes, we can often use a sleeping bag on a rug. But if we’re in a hotel (with questionably clean carpet), I like to build a “nest” out of sheets, blankets, and towels. Its fun for the kids to sleep in a special nest too. Win-win. We also travel with our favorite flashlights and nightlights to ease those midnight runs to the potty.

Have you invented any creative sleep places for your kids while traveling? Anything that absolutely didn’t work?

- By Guest Blogger Heather from Rookie Moms

My son is practically an angel, from what I know about 6-year old boys.  He likes to draw, do art projects, and play the guitar. He has no interest in superheroes, martial arts, or baseball.  He has won eight awards for good behavior in as many weeks of school.
 
He is a chronic sign-maker who makes labels for everything in the house. Give him a stack of printer paper and a pen and he’ll produce signs until the well runs dry. He is allowed to tape them to specific walls in the house.

“JULIAN’S STUFF FROM STEP ONE” reads the sign next to his preschool artwork. “SCARLETT’S STUFF FOR JULIAN” is the heading above a column of artwork his sister has dedicated to him. “EVRYONE STUFF” says a sign taped to my living room wall. Apparently I am supposed to be taping my own artwork there.

If you’ve guessed that I can mill about the house, doing my own thing while he draws at the dining table, you’d be making the same mistake that I continue to make.

Yesterday I pulled out a box of Halloween paraphernalia for both of my kids to explore. Julian set to work, using transparent tape to plaster my house with pumpkin cutouts. He helped himself to a Tupperware container that he placed on a stool, filled it with small trinkets like plastic spiders.

Since my busy little independent beaver seemed content, I turned my focus to our 3-year old, helping her open packages of Halloween stickers that went unused last year.

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Julian was holding paper up to the wall and writing on it. WITH A SHARPIE.

“TAKE ONE” read the invitation, with an arrow pointing down to the container of spiders.

Please God, let that be a stack of paper he is writing on and not a single sheet.

No such luck.

The bleed-through of the marker was minimal, but my lesson is learned:  quiet independent play can be the most dangerous kind.

By guest blogger Whitney Moss from Rookiemoms.com

By Whitney from RookieMoms.com

For some, Grandma and Papa’s house is a home away from home. For most of us however, it is a bit of a foreign land. The refrigerator houses different foods, the sink doesn’t have a stool in front of it, and the dog is not used to children.  Here are some savvy parent survival tips I’ve taught myself.

 
Keep expectations in check. I am the parent, responsible for my kids’ comfort and well being. My parents are not obligated to provide any particular supplies. If I ask them to food shop for me, I must be polite, gracious and flexible. If I cannot do that, I should do the shopping for myself.

Protect my boundaries. If an activity or guests are planned during a nap, I can let them know that my daughter and my husband will stay behind for naptime. If the guests are intimidating to my anxious child, I can say that she’s not feeling social and we’ll try again later.

Facilitate bonding. Some grandparents are unable to sit down and focus in the way that playing with a toddler requires. (Yeah, I know, it can be boring!) As the parent who knows all parties best, I can suggest some activities that suit both temperaments. “I bet Scarlett would love to help you pick tomatoes.” “Can you help him get his clothes on?” or “Remember when you used to draw castles for me? Can you show Julian how to draw one?”

Make my requests reasonable. My grandfather likes to watch CNN on full volume for hours each day. My stepfather watches the local news every night. Sorry media folks, but these programs are full of violence that is too intense for young kids. Rather than expect my folks to DVR all programs until after bedtime, I use a trick and ask if they can watch after the kids go to bed or how about if I take them outside for an hour, and can we turn the TV off when we come back?

Embrace the disruption. While I can’t accept news stories of suicide bombings in the background during playtime, I can ease up on some other areas. Going to bed thirty minutes late after an adult-sized serving of ice cream is not going hurt anyone and it will probably give Grandma and Papa great pleasure.
If I can remember a few of my own savvy guidelines (AKA eat my own dog food), then these intergenerational visits can be a source of great memories and free childcare. If I become an uptight control freak, I’m ruining my own good time.

Heather Flett and Whitney Moss are authors of The Rookie Mom’s Handbook: 250 Activities to do With (and Without!) Your Baby. They also share crazy fun activities at Rookie Moms and 510Families. They each have two children and live in Berkeley, CA.

By Whitney from RookieMoms.com

When Henry Ford launched his automobile into the world, he had never even heard of television.  Now, minivans come equipped with them.

Back when the current generation of parents were themselves children, and Sesame Street was part of the average American media diet, car trips were full of Are we there yets and Slug bug YELLOW! punches.  Now, children can immerse themselves in a Pixar video and look out the car window for the first time just in time for the car to roll into the LEGOland parking lot.  Siblings may speak less than five words to each other during a two-hour ride.

Is this healthy?

Isn’t gazing out the window and learning the lay of your state’s land part of one’s basic education? How about road trip games? That’s quality family time. And being bored? Experts now claim it’s good for children.

On the other hand, when momma ain’t happy, nobody’s happy, or so says the frequently quoted adage. So, the possibility of arriving at a destination without enduring hours of bickering and whining is a tremendous upside to TV in the car.

So, I vote YES to TV in the car. A thousand times yes. I do buy the “being bored is good for kids” argument, but not to the extent that I might suffer for it on a precious vacation day.

Since our car did not come with an embedded DVD player, we attach a portable one to the back of the front seats on rides that exceed one hour. It has two screens so both kids can see the same movie without craning their necks.  When we arrive at our destination, we remove the screens to avoid the inevitable requests for movies as we drive from a hotel to a nearby restaurant. (To purchase one like this, search for a “dual screen portable DVD player” on your favorite online store.)

On which side of this debate do you land?

And by the way, you parents who are pretending that handing your kid an iPhone is somehow different than a DVD player, I beg to differ. Unless they are using the camera for documentary purposes, it is unlikely that iPhone users are enjoying the landscape of our great nation.

Whitney Moss is the co-founder of RookieMoms.com along with her partner Heather Flett. They are also the authors of The Rookie Mom’s Handbook: 250 activities to do with (and without!) your baby.

By Whitney from Rookie Moms

Twice my 5-year old son has been to the Ringling Brothers Circus, and twice we left at intermission. 

Heather serves her children vanilla yogurt or plain fruit and calls it dessert. She drinks out of their hot chocolate mugs when they are not looking.

We buy “all-you-can-visit” membership passes to museums and zoos so we can cut out of there at the slightest hint of a meltdown without worrying that we have wasted money on single-use tickets.

Are we the meanest moms around?

I would argue not. We simply share a philosophy that small children need everything in small doses. I would not serve my 2-year old a full surf and turf meal and ask her to clean her plate. Why would I expect her to enjoy a full day at Disneyland? Well, I didn’t!
 
While we took our big boy to Disneyland, his little sister went to the Disney store with Grandma. Is that so wrong? She got three healthy meals and a long nap, plus time to fondle Snow White costumes and stuffed Nemos. At the end of the trip, they both got the age-appropriate dose of Disney (and we saved on double park admission prices!).

Travel can be full of exciting experiences for kids, but their ability to process entertainment, food, and other stimulation is on a smaller scale than ours.

So if you see my eating my daughter’s cupcake at a birthday party this weekend, you’ll understand why.

Heather Flett and Whitney Moss are authors of The Rookie Mom’s Handbook: 250 Activities to do With (and Without!) Your Baby. They also share crazy fun activities at Rookie Moms and 510Families.com. They each have two children and live in Berkeley, CA.

By Heather from Rookie Moms

I have many fond memories of eating fast food growing up. I remember those salty fries, the cheap toys, and begging for it all the time. The best thing about road-tripping was that my mom would stop putting up a fight.

Now that I’m a parent of a three year-old and a five-year old, with Alice Waters-influenced eating standards, I’ve made eating on the road tougher for myself. It’s harder to turn up my nose at fast food when there are two whining monkeys in my backseat, yet I am stubborn that way.

For healthier meals on the road, I encourage you to do three things:

1.    Pack and hoard. Bring along some nuts and a small cooler of chillable healthy food: baby carrots, snap peas, hummus, {link} hard-boiled eggs, cheese sticks. As tempting as it is to pack snack bars and other foods that come in their own cartoon character-adorned containers, make sure you’re bringing protein and grains that will keep everyone’s energy level on even keel. Anywhere you stop, you’ll have a healthy picnic ready to go.

2.    Preview your route. Can you find a few healthy chain restaurants along your way? We often use Yelp on our phones to search for “fresh-mex restaurants”. A black bean and cheese burrito will fuel every family member for the next hundred miles or so. The website companion for Eat This Not That! Restaurant Survival Guide scores various fast food restaurants and shares tips to avoid extra salt, calories, and bad stuff.

3.    Be realistic. If a constant stream of treats is what keeps the monkeys quiet (and in turn the driver’s blood pressure in check), you can always resume  eating well when you get home. And your monkeys will have their own fond memories of road-tripping as the only time you ever gave in to their demands for junk food.

To be a savvy parent, sometimes you must plan ahead and sometimes you must chill. Going on vacation should be relaxing for you too. Vegetable consumption may suffer.

Guest bloggers Heather Flett and Whitney Moss are authors of The Rookie Mom’s Handbook: 250 Activities to do With (and Without!) Your Baby. They also share crazy fun activities at Rookie Moms and 510Families.com. They each have two children and live in Berkeley, CA.