MoekatParis's Profile

If you are bringing a stroller, use it as a highchair. Make sure your stroller has an umbrella. (When it is hot, full sun protecting shades will overheat your child.) If not, get a Totseat (clothwrap portable highchair). This fits on virtually any chair.
I would recommend the bjorn bed if the hotel can't supply you with one. The peapod gets really hot and you have to completely close it to keep your child inside. The aerobed will take up an entire suitcase. It's nice (though it makes noise ever time you move on it and the sheets are awful), but a hotel cot or mattress would be more convenient since you will be going by plane.
Get an umbrella from the hotel for the beach to keep your kids in the shade. Bring your own children's sunscreen and kid safe bug repellant. Get some inflatable toys for the beach that can be easily packed. You can even find collapsable buckets. Just bring a shovel.
Make sure to bring some snacks that you know your kids like, just in case they have trouble with the hotel food.
Don't bring too much. You will most likely not use most of it. And have fun!

This post was really helpful. A good follow-up would be a post on travel high chairs. I'd like to know if anyone has tried Phil and Ted's or the Totseat or My Little Seat?

I wouldn't even consider discussing our name choices. No one wants to hear that the name your have cherished since age 8 reminds someone else of that girl who use to pick her nose in class or that boy who gave you wedgies.

I am preparing for another 13 hour trip with my two and 1/2 old and a new one-month-old. Flying with him has always been hell! Let's just say that the last time (he was 1 1/2) he ended up on a kiddie leash and I boarded the plane with a swollen bloody eye. Because the flight over is a day flight he slept a maximum of 45 minutes. I swore never to fly again.

I flew with a car seat because I was alone and needed to be able to strap him in at times, but this was problematic because the seat, though regulated for airplanes, did not attach well and made his feet touch the seat in front of him - to the great delight of this passenger. For travel in the airport I used a carabiner to attach the car seat to a suitcase with wheels, a kiddie harness for the little one, (a necessary evil), just to get through the security check. Our stroller was checked and lost. But since we were flying Air France and had paid with Visa, we were fully reimbursed.

Things that can save you during the flight: the mystery bag. Prepare a bag of new objects, some wrapped, some not, that you can give out at intervals. This should include stickers, crayons, toy cars and figurines, snacks that they can be fed slowly like cheerios, small containers with lids that they can open and close and put things into, books, playdough, paper and a hole puncher that catches the holes, a key chain with various objects and a pen light, finger puppets, and one of those goeey creatures that sticks on windows and then creeps down, and that favorite familiar security object. NO noise makers or beware the death glare from other passengers. IPhones are also great.

Also don't forget the hand sanitizer.

And most of all, remember, you will most likely never see any of these people ever again.

Goodluck.

My sister flew Virgin last month in economy and Sir Richard was on her flight. Hopefully he shared the food also.

My family is from Brazil and we eat a lot of beans, mainly pinto bean and occasionally black beans. The beans are soaked overnight. This definitely helps lighten the load. Also beans should be accompanied by greens and something citric to help digestion. We normally eat a bit of kale on the side, sauteed in a tad of oil and a bit of garlic and finish off with some orange slices.

Seeing the room would help, but I guess you could try either red or yellow. (It seems like the bird's beak is red.) If you think red is too harsh for a child's room, you could always just paint one wall red and leave the others white. Have fun.

Ooooo, so red!

Thomas can and will rock that thing everywhere!

That was Benjamin Franklin! Thanks for the historical tidbit. By the way daylight savings in France is March 30th. We'll get to keep our hour just a little bit longer. But in the end the French still get up later and go to bed later than Americans anyway.