AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?

Vegas with Kids?

I recently returned from my annual trip to Las Vegas with some old school friends for the opening round of March Madness.  While I never considered bringing TJ on this trip (he just doesn't have the stamina yet to sit and watch 32 college basketball games in two days), seeing some kids there reminded me of the take him/ don't take him debate Travelin' Mom and I went through when we had to go to Vegas for a family function.  We searched tons of websites that offered activities for children in Vegas (although TJ was 10 months old at the time, so the only fun for him would be staring at a spinning slot machine) and also visited several message boards discussing whether to bring your kids to Vegas.  The majority of people's answer:  Don't bring them. 

I can't say I completely disagree.  We didn't bring TJ with us on that trip.  Las Vegas, especially the Strip, is a very adult-oriented.  And I'm not referring to the little cards with pictures of girls and their phone numbers being handed to you as you walk from casino to casino.  I'm saying that the majority of the entertainment is for adults and not much thought is put into entertaining the kids.  For example, most hotels are okay with kids walking through the casino(according to their policy, the Bellagio only allows kids under 18 to enter the casino if they're registered guests), so long as they're just cutting through to reach a destination.  But, I've watched security guards admonish kids, even kids with their parents, to keep moving if they've stopped for even a second.  In fact, my under-18 niece and nephew got the treatment several times on that same family trip.  So, I'm of the mindset that there are several better places to take kids than Las Vegas. 

On the other hand, if you really want to, or even have to, bring your children to Vegas, it's not like there's nothing for them to do.  I saw several happy kids parading back from my hotel pool, many of which are resort-quality in Vegas.  So, if your juice is coming from a box rather than a sportsbook, here are some places to find kid-friendly activities in Vegas:

http://www.lasvegaskids.net/

http://www.kidsinvegas.com/

http://www.vegas.com/attractions/kids.html

http://govegas.about.com/od/familyfun/a/kidsinlv.html

Mother's Day: Explore Chicago's Swedish American Museum Center

The Children's Museum of Immigration, located on the third floor of the Swedish American Museum Center (5211 N. Clark, Chicago, IL 60640, 773-728-8111; ) in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago, is a true gem that your children will love exploring.  I know it doesn't sound like a place children will rush to, but the Swedish children's museum has done a phenomenal job ensuring that your kids will enjoy learning about the lives of Swedish immigrants. 

In this hands-on exhibit, kids can dress up as Swedish immigrants, get their passports, board an immigrant steamer, and travel to America to start a new life.  TJ liked swabbing the deck with a broom on the steamer.  Once in America, kids can check out life in a pioneer log cabin.  TJ loved picking realistic vegetables from the garden, then running into the little cabin to prepare dinner on the old fashioned stove for the baby in her cradle.  Kids can also fish off a bridge with a magnetic pole that catches stuffed fish, ride a horse, or check for freshly laid eggs under chickens.  Probably the highlight, though, is the Swedish farm house (or "stuga"), in which you can milk  a cow (ok, a wooden one, not a real one, but TJ didn't seem to care), churn butter, collect apples, and hang laundry out to dry.  All these activities may sound a bit pedestrian for kids of the electronic age, but maybe that's why they enjoy it so much; it's a complete departure from everything they know. 

The children's museum is by far the best part of the Swedish American Museum Center (in fact, kids will likely consider the other portion of the museum which highlights Swedes' contributions to Chicago downright dreary), so make sure to visit during the limited times the children's museum is open: Tuesday - Friday from 1:00 -4:00 p.m., and Saturday - Sunday from 11 a.m.-4 p.m.  Admission is $4 per adult, $3 per child (under 1 get in free), with a $10 family rate.  Or, even better, visit on the second Tuesday of every month when admission is free! 

Renting a House Instead of a Hotel Room

Hotels can be a crapshoot when traveling with kids.  Is the room big enough?  Is it too noisy?  Have the drinking glasses been "cleaned" with the same rag used to mop the dirty floor?  Okay, I can't help you with that last one, but the first two questions can be solved by renting a house instead of hotel room.  If you have a large family or want to share lodging costs with your extended family or friends, a house rental is a great option.  Of course, it's not like you can pop on Orbitz and rent a house-- they're a little harder to find.  Unless you know where to look.

Two great sites to start with are:

• www.vrbo.com:  This site claims an inventory of over 95,000 vacation rentals, both in the U.S. and worldwide.  It helps to know exactly where you want to go, as you have to navigate through different towns to get to the inventory.  The site does provide handy, clickable maps to further narrow your search area once you pick a particular state or region.  For example, if you wanted to hobnob in the Hamptons this summer, you can click on New York, then click on the map for Long Island, then pick a particular area from a list (this part may be difficult if you don't know the differences between the particular areas, as there are no maps at this level).  If you chose the Amagansett area, you'd have nine homes to pick from.  Then, click on a link for any particular home and you'll get a detailed rundown on the house, it's price and features, a calendar of available dates, and usually some photos.  You can then click on an e-mail link to inquire about renting.  It's great for browsing.  I guess the one feature I'd like to see is some type of renter feedback to make sure what you see is what you get.  That said, the site does offer the "HomeAway Rent with Confidence Guarantee," which guarantees up to $5,000 of a traveler's payment in the event "the listiing is determined not to be legitimate in accordance with our policy." 
• www.pickpackgo.com: This site is newer and has less inventory (66,000), but offers a more targeted search in that you can search by location, desired ameneties, and number of rooms to narrow down your choices, rather than just browse on a map.  While that's better for people who know their exact dates and location, it's not as good for those who only have a rough idea of where and when they want to go.  Pickpackgo also offers user reviews to help you choose properties. 

 

Mother's Day: Use Seatcheck.org to Find Car Seat Inspection Events

So you did your homework, checked NHTSA's Ease of Use Ratings before purchasing an infant or child car seat, purchased the seat, and referred to the manual during installation.  Think you're done?  Nope -- there's one last important step to ensuring your child's safety in the car.  Find a child passenger safety seat inspection location, and take your car (with car seat installed) and child (unless you mangled the installation so badly you can't safely put your child in it-- I'm looking at you, Travelin' Dad) to get it checked out.  For an easy way to find the location of a safety check near you, go to www.seatcheck.org.  Either enter your state abbreviation or zip code, and it will give you tons of locations near you for inspections, including police departments, hospitals, and fire departments. 

We've had TJ's seats (first the infant pumpkin seat, and then the convertible seat) checked for proper installation and fit for TJ at an Allstate Insurance location near us (for free!).  Their volunteers are to be commended, and so are the parents who take the time to do this crucial check to ensure their children's safety.

Delaycast Predicts Your Pain Probability

I, like pretty much everyone else, have always hated flight delays.  Since TJ came into the mix, however, I've progressed from hating flight delays to fearing even the thought of them.  Because, while travel delays are no fun regardless of who you're traveling with, you take suffering to a whole new level when you have to entertain a young child in the airport or, even worse, while stuck on the tarmac.  For these reasons, a while back I wrote about some strategies for avoiding airline delays.  I even managed to put some of those strategies to good use in my own travels. 

Now, I've recently discovered a new weapon to add to the on-time arsenal:  Delaycast.com.  Before  booking your tickets next time, log on to Delaycast and enter your departure and arrival airports, your departure date, and the hour of your departure time.  Delaycast will then predict the chance of flights meeting those criteria departing on time, as well as how many minutes on average you can expect to be delayed, and the odds of your flight being outright canceled. 

How do they do it?  According to their website, Delaycast's "estimates are based on predictive modeling technologies that model historical patterns in flight delays and project them into the future."  Delaycast concedes that "all predictions and profiles are produced by the models, and as such, are never 100% accurate.  Nevertheless, the insight provided beyond the airlines' schedules will help most travelers avoid troubles."  Music to my travel-planning ears.

Hey Kids: Tote Your Junk-y in a Trunki

TJ is fast approaching the age of those little kids we see dragging their cute little rolly bags around the airport.  I always wonder what exactly's in those things.  I'm guessing teddy bears, Elmos, and dolls that are too precious to risk in checked baggage, for fear of being sucked out of the plane.  But, can you actually get your little kid to pull his or her own weight?  In other words, to actually carry some of their clothes or other necessities, thus reducing the parents' ever-increasing load? 

Maybe you can, now that there's Trunki, a sort of animal-shaped (horse? bull?), wheeled, plastic, carry-on suitcase that children (the site says ages 3 to 6) can either pull themsleves or ride along on through the airport.  I haven't tried one, but (at $39.99) I'm pretty tempted, as I can see kids getting excited over something that looks more like a ride or pet than a boring old suitcase.  They've even got names-- Terrance is the blue one and Trixie is the pink one.

From the boring adult's perspective it also seems pretty practical.  The website's FAQ's say that Trunki measures 18" by 7.9" by 12", has a 5 gallon capacity, and weighs only 3.8 pounds.  It'd be interesting to see just how swiftly and smoothly you can pull your kids through the airport on a Trunki.  If the little video they play on the website is any indicator, it looks pretty easy.  I'll be keeping my eyes out in the airport to see if I can catch any Trunkis in action.

Thanks to Intelligent Travel for spreading the word on Trunki. 

Mother's Day: NHTSA Unveils Its Ease-of-Use Ratings For Child Car Seats

I was thinking about last week's post regarding how to use a car seat on an airplane.  Since statistically, children are much more likely to be injured in a car accident than in a plane, my next two posts are going to be devoted to car seat safety as it relates to . . . cars.  A novel concept, I know.

Before buying a new car seat for your infant, toddler, or child, check out the website for The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which just unveiled its 2008 Car Seat Ease-of-Use Ratings.  The five-star rating program evaluates how easy car features are to use.  All car seats rated by NHTSA meet Federal Safety Standards.  But as we all know, while those seats may be deemed safe in a crash-test scenario, they can differ in how easy they are to use - which of course can ultimately affect your child's safety.  A 2003 study conducted for NHTSA observed one or more forms of misuse in 72.6 percent of the seats inspected.    Some of the documented misuses included improper installation and secureness of the car seat in the vehicle, and secureness/fit of the harness straps or belts.  Faced with this staggering statistic, it's a good idea to buy a car seat that ranks high in NHTSA's ease-of-use ratings.  The five-star rating system helps consumers evaluate the following categories:  instructions, labels, vehicle installation features, and securing the child, and then provides an overall ease of use rating.  Just click on the type of car seat you are thinking of buying (for example, infant rear facing seat), and check out the listed car seats and the ratings they received in each category.  For further information on why a seat received a particular rating, just click on the car seat's name to see NHTSA's detailed analysis.

Traveling With or Without Them

Two entries from this site, one offering tips on traveling with your kids (babies to be precise) and one offering tips when traveling without your kids, are featured in blog carnivals this week.  Travelin' Mom's article Ship Your Baby Gear Ahead, which offers some good resources for lightening your load when traveling with a baby, is featured in this month's Carnival of Travelers, hosted at Fly Away Cafe.  In addition, my Don't Leave Home Without (Signing) It entry, which discusses the pros of signing a Nondurable Power of Attorney for Physical and Health Care of Minor Child, is posted on this week's Carnival of Tips (always an interesting read) over at Tip Diva.  Check them out and I'm sure you'll find some other entries that pique your interest at the same time.

Five Great Sources for Road Trip Games

Having already discussed the benefits of using an online road trip planner, it's time to upgrade your car trip from tolerable to fun (or at least more tolerable).  How?  With those three magic words:  Road Trip Games. 

I planned to present a list of some of the best road trip games but, when doing my research, I discovered there are several sites that cover road trip games much better than I ever could.  After weeding through the dozens of sites that offer the same old lineup of I Spy, The License Plate Game, and Punch Buggy, I created a list of five websites with some unique road trip game offerings:

1. Mom'sMinivan.com:  This is the mother of all road trip game sites.  Pages of different games, including several (like car bingo, scavenger hunt, etc.) for which you can print out pre-made game sheets.  It's also one of the few sites that does a good job covering appropriate entertainment for different age levels, including babies and toddlers.  My favorite game here?  "Counting Cows", in which you divide the two sides of the car into teams.  If you pass cows on your side of the car, you count as many as you can and your cumulative total is your "score."  But, if you pass a cemetery on your side at any point and the other team shouts out "Your cows are buried" you go back to zero.  Most cows when the trip is over wins. 
2. RoadTripPlanning.com:  Okay, most of the 18 games listed on this site aren't exactly new, but you could probably drive peacefully from New York to California if you played every one of them.  My favorite game here:  "Buzz", a counting game in which you try to reach 100 without making a mistake. Sounds simple, but for the fact that, every time you get to a number that's divisible by seven (7, 14, 21) or has a seven in it (17), you must say "buzz" instead of the number.  If you master sevens, you can always use a different number as the "buzz" number.  Should you remember this one from your college days, you'll note it's slightly easier when not played as a drinking game. 
3. Kidshealth.org's Road Trip Boredom Busters:  This site's boredom busters offer some ideas to really exercise your kids' creative muscles, like journal jotting and team storytelling.  My favorite game here: what they call "word play", where your kids write down words they spot on road signs, bumper stickers, storefronts, etc., and then create a song, story or poem from these words.  I can easily see this one passing the time until at least the next rest stop. 
4. About.com's Family Vacation Section:  Next to Mom's Minivan, About.com had the most comprehensive coverage of road trip games.  It too has a good list of games to print out (including some different ones from Mom's Minivan) and also does a good job providing age appropriate entertainment ideas from babies to grade schoolers.  My favorite game here:  an easier, faster version of the "license plate game" in which you simply need to find a license plate that starts with each letter of the alphabet.  In other words, a car with the plate QVT120 and a car with the plate SRD218 will knock Q and S off your list, even if they are both from Pennsylvania.  This is especially helpful to play when driving through a state like Texas, where you can go hundreds of miles seeing only Texas plates. 
5. Are We There Yet Auto Travel Game:   This last entry isn't for a road trip game site in general, but for one particular game.  Since several people have mistakenly stumbled upon this site looking for the road trip game "Are We There Yet," I figured the least I could do was post a link to the game.  I can't say I've played it, but if the name is any indicator, I'm sure it's fantastic.

Hope this list helps the miles pass by quickly and enjoyably.

Mother's Day: How To Use A Car Seat On An Airplane

Congratulations!  You made the decision touted by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as the safest way for kids under two to travel on an airplane-- you decided to purchase a seat for them and bring the car seat on the plane.  Now what do you do with the darn thing?  Travelin' Dad has fought this battle many times, and we have a few tips (from the FAA website and our experience combined) to help make traveling with your car seat go a little more smoothly:

1. Check the manual before you leave home and make sure your seat is FAA approved.  In fact, you may want to throw the manual into your carry-on.  Once we had a flight attendant question whether our car seat was FAA approved.  Your seat should have "this restraint is certified for use in motor vehicles and aircraft" printed on it.  If it doesn't, you may be asked to check the car seat as baggage (which would defeat the whole purpose of purchasing an extra seat). 
2. Review how to install the seat into an airplane in the calm and quiet of your home.   As Travelin' Dad knows, it is tough to work under pressure when passengers are trying to board all around you and your wife and kid(s) are smushed into the tiny space of the row in which you are trying to install the seat.  He refers to this exercise as a travel version of "beat the clock."
3. Don't be afraid to ask for help from a flight attendant if you really get stuck.  They're usually more than happy to help.  In fact, they may not-so-subtly offer help if you're creating a gridlock of boarding passengers. 
4. Be prepared that many airlines insist the car seat be installed in the window seat (so it is not a barrier to people trying to exit).  Also, say goodbye to exit rows and the row in front and behind the exit row when traveling with a car seat.
5. Just like in the car, if your child is less than 20 pounds, place the seat facing the rear.  From 20-40 pounds, you can place the seat facing the front.  Let the games begin when you face the seat forward - TJ's feet almost touch the tray table of the seat in front of him, and of course he finds it an irresistible game to kick it constantly.  I take his shoes off during the flight to soften the blow of his kicks.

If all else fails, do your best to properly tighten the airplane seat belt into the frame of your car seat, and then put an extra hand on the seat to stabilize it during take-off and landing (no offense to Travelin' Dad's handiwork).  Remember, even if the process seems a little inconvenient, you can rest assured that you are doing to safest thing for your child by reserving an extra seat and strapping him into the car seat for the flight.

TSA To Give Families Life In The Slow Lane

The TSA began testing a "self-select" lane pilot this week in the Salt Lake City airport, with further testing soon at the Denver airport.  In short, passengers can "self-select" one of three security screening lanes through which to proceed.  The TSA describes these lanes as follows:

"[T]he green lane is for families traveling with children or people who need special assistance. These folks may not travel that often and need extra help with the procedures and assistance navigating security. The blue lane is for casual travelers who are somewhat familiar with the procedures and have multiple carry-ons. The expert, or black diamond lane is for those who know the procedures well and always arrive at the checkpoint with appropriate items removed and limited carry-on luggage." 

First of all, how many government press releases use the word "folks"?  Second, regardless of designations, I don't see this choose-your-own-line system being too successful. Would people voluntarily label themselves a "casual traveler" and choose a slower lane, instead of an "expert traveler" who can use a fast lane?  This is America.  Don't we all think we're above average at everything?  We may not travel that often, but we feel perfectly capable of handling the "expert" line, unlike those other "casual" travelers over there. . . .  Of course, I'd be willing to swallow my pride if the "casual traveler" line was shorter than the "expert" line.  Which leads to the next point-- if people are "self-selecting" which line to join, do you think the 20th business traveler isn't going to jump in the family line of six people?  In other words, it'll be the same game we've always played:  choose the shortest line possible. 

Admittedly, I've come down a little harsh on the TSA once or twice before.  This time, I think their heart's in the right place.  I'll also concede that Travelin' Mom and I take more time than, well, pretty much anyone when we have to get TJ, his accoutrements, and his Sesame Street posse through security.  And it would be nice to feel that we're not holding up others who could move more quickly.  For that reason, I can see where a designated security line for families and those needing special assistance would come in handy.  But, for now, these lane designations carry less authority than the "10 items or less" line at the grocery store. 

So, unless you really are a "beginner" traveler, you'll most likely do what you've always done when heading to security screening:  choose the shortest line.