Things I Learned...

The last week of traveling as a family opened my eyes to a number of lessons worth remembering...

1) A vacation with a baby is more like a field trip than a vacation per se. My good friend Marie warned me of this phenomenon, but you have to live it to believe it. While you get to vacation from the daily routine back home, there are certain things that you still have to do...like feed, sleep and bathe the baby, you just get to do fun things like go to the ocean and watch birds in between those things.

2) If you put a baby in the sand, it will try to eat the sand.

3) You get over your fear of creepy strangers interacting with your child really fast, if said stranger is making your baby giggle by playing peekaboo over the seat while on the plane.

4) The ability to rent baby equipment is an amazing thing. We used http://www.beachbabyrentals.com/. It was amazing. For less than $100 we got a jogger stroller, high chair, bucket of age appropriate toys, exer-saucer, and boppy pillow for the whole week. It made the whole week just a bit more comfortable for everyone.

5) A baby in a swim cap will draw an embarrassing amount of attention.

6) Gone are the days of laying by the pool, drifting in and out of sleep while reading 5 books in a week.

7) You can make a heck of a lot of food on a stove-top and microwave. We cooked in our room most nights...spaghetti, flat-top burgers, stir-fry, and chicken burritos. Yum.

8) The airport people are rooting for you to get through security as fast as possible. I had a bottle of water that went through security and the guy asked me if the water was for formula. ANd I said no, it was for me and Tillie because she is so constipated. The guy runs some tests and gives me the water back and says: "Next time, just say its' for formula", winked and walked away.

9) Trying to keep the babe on Minnesota time will not always be successful.

10) Time together with no work pressure, school pressure, or guilt about doing household chores is a priceless thing.