{I started this post last week and realized this morning that I never published it. Ooops!!}
Since our vacation was the first flying (and honestly, the first with totally mobile toddlers) I sought out advice from more experienced MoMs. And that, combined with my own experience, led me to write up this. So here you go . . .
To stroller or not to stroller: Initially I thought we'd bring a stroller because - duh! - we've always used a stroller. But initially Tim had other ideas (thinking, since we had 4 adults in our party - we'd just let B&K walk and hold our hands). So this led to a big internal debate -- do we lug the stroller (which had lots of advantages & disadvantages) or not (ditto previous statement). In the end, we brought our new City Micro stroller and while I already loved the stroller enough to marry it before we went on vacation, I love it EVEN MORE after vacation! Good golly . . . I wish I had this thing 2 years ago! Anyhoo, it was super easy to gate check (I didn't even bother purchasing a travel bag, as some friends suggested . . . it was totally fine and unscathed checking at the gate). We didn't use it at all while we were in St. Croix (we let B&K walk everywhere holding our hands), but we had a tight layover in Atlanta on the way down and it was a lifesaver as we raced to our gate (3 terminals and a train ride away). Plus on our trip back we had a LONG layover in ATL and the kids were up at 5:30 am, skipped a nap and we weren't scheduled to get home until midnight. I had the forethought to bring their OH (read: cold weather) PJs to change them into at the airport and then I walked the B terminal 700 times trying to get B&K to sleep. My children NEVER sleep anywhere but their beds. I can count on one hand the # of times they have fallen asleep in their car seats and the last time they slept in a stroller was when they were 8 weeks old. But low & behold, extreme exhaustion and the blessed City Micro worked wonders in the B terminal of the Atlanta Airport.
Water Floaties: I bought these from One Step Ahead for our trip (of course they are on sale now. Nice.).
They worked pretty well. While B&K LOVE bathtime, it took a 12 step intervention process to get them into the pool (and neither one of them made it to the step where they would float on their own). So I can't really say how well they work as an actual flotation device, but we made a strict rule that they couldn't go near the water without their "Nemos" on, and it always made me feel a bit better knowing if they fell in they'd at least float to the top eventually. ;-) They are currently (and have been for a while) OBSESSED with the movie "Finding Nemo" and there is a little orange fish on the front of these so that helped bring an association (and comfort) to them. They did ride up on occasion, but I blame that on user error (i.e. we didn't adjust the straps properly when we put them on). They were pretty easy to get on & off, too.
Staying in a place that isn't home (aka: NOT CHILDPROOFED!): This was actually our third time renting a place with B&K, but really the first time with two totally mobile children (I guess that was a big advantage to Bennett's delay. Ha!). We rented a house in OBX when they were 6 mo old and last year we rented a condo in Myrtle Beach when they were about 14 mo old. This was our first time flying, which actually is where the challenge came in. In previous trips we could pack the car to the seams with all of our necessary "childproofing" items. But this time, since we were flying Delta and being charged $25 a bag, we planned to bring only 2 bags for the four of us (which meant I carried a shit-ton of tote bags as carry-on with toys, books, etc. b/c we all had a ticket and therefore we could each bring a tote bag & purse type bag. HA!). If we were driving I would have brought our cheap-o wooden baby gate for keeping kids out of areas they shouldn't be in. I also would have brought a few outlet plugs and some type of strip lock things for cabinets. And I totally would have loved something to keep them from opening the doors to the bedrooms . . . that part sucked.What made this house most challenging for us was the flooring (12 in, uneven spanish tiles with concrete grout . . . that is what B fell on and conked his head so hard on. They fell a lot on this and it was ALL throughout the house). The other thing that sucked is that there wasn't AC in the main part of the house. And they didn't have screens on the doors. So this is how we kept B&K inside away from the pool (which as you can see, isn't the best b/c they could totally lift this up & out of the way).
The pool:
Our "gate" (a patio chair turned sideways . . . that was the caretaker for the house suggestion on how to childproof the pool):
Our "gate" to keep them from going down the stairs to the grass & the beach:
The other challenging part was the stucco "wall" around the pool edge . . . it basically came up to their bellies and they thought it was big-time fun to lean over on it (there was a 4 ft drop to the ground). That always made me nervous!
Other random stuff: Bringing DVDs was our lifesaver on this trip as well. I seriously don't know how we would have survived if our kids didn't watch TV. The satellite TV didn't work so we couldn't bring up any channels. But they did have a DVD player on the TV and we watched Finding Nemo, Toy Story 1 & 2, YGG and a zillion Elmos over & over again. The sun rises around 5:45 there so B&K were up with the sun every day (they normally don't get up until 7:30) . . . so having movies around (even if they don't exactly sit and watch the whole thing) was a lifesaver!! I also had a ton of new toys, books & games and tried to find "new" safe things for B&K to play with around the house we were renting.
Moral of this story is that I basically didn't let B&K out of my sight for a second. The entire trip. Unless they were contained in their PNPs, which B&K actually tried to climb out of multiple times (and this scared the shit out of me b/c, of course, they would have fallen on to the hard tiled floor). So when they woke up early I would dart into their room as soon as I heard the first peep (as opposed to home, when I would normally leave them in their room until they started to get crabby). All-in-all it was a fun vacation.
