Ten Tips for a Hotel Stay with Baby

"What are these things on the floor and how to I get them in my mouth!?"

It's week two of our marathon trip to DC (we came for a week, went home for a week, and came back for another week.) Hubby came for work and baby and I came to enjoy the beautiful weather and sites. This might sound a little crazy but we actually travel back and forth and all over the place quite a bit (in our son's 9 months of life he's spent about one entire month in a hotel.)  You can say our son is quite accustomed to the hotel stay. I'd like to say that we have it down to a nice little routine that I think could be of some benefit. These might be common sense things, but they were huge revelations to us.

1. Get a room with queen beds

Why? Because King rooms tend to be smaller, and you need all the space you can get to put a little buffer zone between you and the sleeping baby. Additionally, having the extra bed is helpful to corral all of babies stuff.

2. Divide the room

Put all of babies stuff on one side, and all yours on the other (choose the side with the bathroom!) This keeps you from constantly having to make noise to go the bathroom, change clothes, eat dinner, etc.

3. Set up a visual barricade

When we put our son to sleep, if he sees us in his room he wants to stay up and play, even more so at a hotel. We recommend putting up a blanket or putting the crib on the other side of the bed so baby can't see you. 

3. Run the fan

AC units in hotels can be loud, especially when they turn on and off. If you can avoid it, do it, by leaving it on run. Additionally, it acts like a sound buffer for all the moving around you might do.

4. Bring a travel crib or a pack and play

We swore by this travel crib until our son was 7m old (at which we got too scared that he would try to pull himself out.) Some hotels have cribs (really just pack and plays) you can borrow but I've heard of bad experiences so we just bring our own.

5. Set some mood lighting

Our son goes to bed at 7pm which leaves us in a pitch dark hotel room...at 7pm. Keeping the room pitch black is not realistic, so before you put baby to bed pick one small light that you are going to leave on and dim it as needed by draping a towel over it. Then turn on all the lights while getting baby ready. Once you are about to put him down, turn off everything except the one little light you plan to keep on - wah lah - something to read by, eat dinner by, check your phone with, whatever. Having the little light on also keeps your phone from reflecting light all over the room (which our son has a 6th sense for detecting) and will keep you from having to check Pinterest under the sheets or hang out in the bathroom all night.

6. Set up a changing station.

Bring an extra changing pad or use a towel from the hotel to set up a little changing station (on the spare bed or desk;) it's much easier than trying to unpack/pack the diaper bag continuously.

7. Load up on disposable bags.

Ask for extra trash bags at the front desk or bring disposable diaper bags, surprisingly some hotels don't line their cans.

8. Set up a feeding station.

We've come up for two feeding station options over the course of our travels. OPTION A - The Lobster by Phil and Ted. So light, so portable, so strong. We bring it EVERYWHERE. We love it. OPTION B - We use our umbrella stroller. We have to bring it anyway, baby stays strapped in, and we avoid any dramatic eat/playing so that everything isn't soaked in peas.

9. Towel the tub.

At home we have an infant bath for our son and the first time we traveled we brought the bath with us...and then promptly never took it out of the car. It was too bulky and annoying and a space waste. Instead, put a towel in the bottom of the tub. For infants, use this as a little nest to sponge bath them or if they are sitting up, you can use it to help them from slipping around.

10. Bring snacks.

I don't know if it's the blackout curtains or the fan noise but my son sleeps superbly at hotels. He sleep so well, that I wake up first and am starving for breakfast. So bring some snacks, you'll thank me later.

Hopefully, this leads to great sleep and a nice relaxing stay for mom, dad, and baby!

Sincerely,
Jordan

P.S. - Got any more tips? Leave them in the comments below!

Feed Read: Travel on Baby!

While I'm nursing my son, I get about 3-5 min where I can just sit and read. Every week, I'm going to start you off with a Feed Read: a couple of links to sites that I enjoyed and would recommend to you whenever you get your own five minutes during the day.

We're on the road again this week, so here's a few reads about traveling with baby.

How to Survive a Road Trip with Kids: don't forget a car game, stickers, and lots of toys - (oh, and maybe some candy and bribery.)

This is INGENIOUS! Lost child - check for tattoo. Or if you just love temp tats...check out these awesome designer ones.

Try some of these cool baby travel essentials (plus some for you too!)

Advice for flying sanely with a newborn.

Our pack and play is super heavy and bulky so one of our friends who has this recommended we try it.

Enjoy!

Sincerely,
Jordan

Is There a Perfect Solution Out There?

Car seats are outrageous - so many kinds, so many rules, so many features; so overwhelming! I've been to four stores in the three days, I've looked online, and I even checked out Craigslist, all in search of the perfect car seat solution.

My problem is that my son is at the breaking point of his Chicco Keyfit, (22 pounds) and I can't figure out what to put him in next. Since he's only 9 months, we still have to keep him in a rear facing seat, which is safer and preferred by us, but they are HUGE and we can barely find one that fits comfortably in our car. You can't even see around the clunkers (even with the mirror) and since my son is going through a bit of a separation anxiety phase, that makes for a long ride.

Maybe my expectations are too high in what I want in a seat - safe, good weight capacity, fits in our car, and the ability to see my child in the mirror from the front; but I don't think so. Our car, a VW Sportwagon, is not that small! Plus, what do people in smaller cars use???

After my last unsuccessful trip to BBRUS, I finally started asking around. I got a few good suggestions that aren't on display at BBRUS:  Maxi-Cosi, Peg Perego, Recaro, and finally I just happened to ask a woman what she uses in her Toyota: a Sunshine Kids/Diono. We tried them all out, but the Sunshine Kids/Diono (Diono is the new name) was the winner.

Can't beat that.

When we tried it out, (with some minor adjustment to the passenger seat) it fit fabulously, I could see him from the front and he's actually really happy in it because he can now see out the window (yay for built in entertainment!) Yesterday, when we hit the road for what turned out to be an ELEVEN HOUR drive to DC, it literally stood the test of time: we had not one meltdown on the road. It's also upright enough that I felt comfortable doing a solid feed while we were underway.

I know there isn't always a "perfect" solution out there for every problem, but there is a solution that will solve your problem perfectly enough. In this situation, it was worth the extra time and effort to find this winner. It's not one of the "famous" brands, but when did famous equate to quality? When it comes to baby products, I feel so pressured to jump into these "popular" products and in so many of the instances that we have, they turn out to be a huge let down. Just like when we searched for a stroller, we had to find the product that was right for us.

Sincerely,
Jordan

Strollers, Love, and The Minimum Effective Dose

For about the past week I've been trying to pick out the perfect umbrella stroller to take to our DC trip in a few weeks. My husband and I talked about all the things we wanted in a lightweight stroller and I went out and found a few contenders. (In case you are wondering what made it to the final showdown: the Chicco Capri, Maclaren Quest, Uppa-Baby G-Luxe, and the Aprica Presto.) If you've done any stroller research, you would be like, "wow...that's a variety," because they really do have an extreme range in price and in correlating features. It's like trying to compare a Saturn to a Mercedes.

Yesterday, after spending about an hour at Babies R Us pushing my son around in several of the options, I finally just broke down and got the cheapest. It had the least amount of features but, well, the price just couldn't be beat for what we needed most, and the reality is that we just needed something short term.  Essentially, we bought the minimum effective dose.

Minimum Effective Dose (MED) is a concept I learned about in Tim Ferriss' 4 Hour Body. In it, he explains that MED is doing the least amount necessary to get the desired results. For him, working out for an hour every day was unnecessary because the same results came from working out for 20 minutes like every two weeks or something...(don't quote me on that, I don't remember the exact #s, but I'm close. You can check in the book. He also has a steroid use example; regardless the concept is the same.)

I couldn't think of a better example than what happened today, on Valentine's Day, when my darling husband got finished work and met me at the car with four carnations. Now, I wasn't expecting flowers and I was thankful that he thought of me on this loveliest of days but I was kind of surprised that it was just four carnations because my husband has typically put a little more effort into his flower selection (having them delivered or stopping at a store on his way home.) Plus, where do you find just four carnations? At an elementary school where you can send a flower-gram to a friend!? I thought maybe he had forgot about Valentine's Day and just borrowed them from a friend...and I asked him that too. He told me he didn't borrow them from a friend but how he got them is important. 

So some background information on my husband - my husband LOVES to take online surveys that give him a dollar every time he submits one. So every once and a while he gets a letter in the mail with a crisp one dollar bill in it and I always make fun of him. The last survey was a $2 survey but instead of sending him 2 crisp $1 bills they sent him a $2 bill! A $2 bill?! Isn't that cool!? I was impressed because who just goes around handing out $2 bills! So he jokes about me being jealous, that I can't make fun of his surveys and how he was going to keep it (away from me) forever. He has too - it's been in his wallet (as if it was gold or something) ever since.

Back to the carnations - so I was like, "how did you get four carnations?" And he told me that "these four carnations are equivalent to $2 worth of flowers, as in a $2 bill worth of flowers." I swear my mouth dropped! I never thought he would spend that $2 bill, especially on me. I seriously still can't believe it. I asked him why he didn't just use other cash and he told me "because I thought it would be cute and that you would appreciate it." OMG! Isn't he cute! Case in point: $2 of carnations = MED.

Back to the strollers: they were all awesome and I for sure had my heart set on the most expensive one and we could have easily just gotten it and been happy and out $200+ but is it really necessary? Especially when all the features we really needed were met in the cheapest option? Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It, and I may/may not be taking it out of context, "Can one desire too much of a good thing?" Heck yeah. The "good thing" was the lightweight stroller with some recline, back support, and a little suspension. The "too much" was the cup holder, the increased weight capacity, the ability to stand-upright; I desired the heck out of it but it's not essential. We just needed the MED.

The concept of MED can be applied to a lot of areas in life, especially parenting. As a type-A personality, I'm always focused on doing things to the max. My son doesn't need to be entertained by me every five seconds and I don't need to enroll him in every baby class in town. Trying to do all these things just gives me a whole lot of stress when all he really needs is the MED.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Sincerely,
Jordan

P.S. - I hope I'm not the only one who has issues with MED - thoughts?