First, a quick shout-out to all of you who gave me ideas and atta-girl you-can-do-it comments about traveling with my preschooler—everything worked out perfectly, and we had an absolutely wonderful time. Thank you so much!

Today I’d like to talk about evening routines, and what sorts of things help mitigate the chaos. As a quick primer to my thrilling home life, we have two boys: a 3.5 year old and a 15-month-old. Here’s our typical end-of-day routine, along with the items I’ve come to rely on:
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I have always been scared of having to take my kids on a plane. We’ve never done it, because our family is close enough to visit by car, and every time I fly on my own I surreptitiously stare at other parents trying to manage small kids and strollers and bags and think to myself, oh thank GOD that’s not me.

The time has come, however, for me to nut up and face my fears, because I have the opportunity to take my 3.5-year-old on a trip to Washington DC at the end of this month. It will be just the two of us, and I am both thrilled about the adventure and, um, COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT.

We’ve been talking a lot about the trip and watching YouTube videos of planes taking off and so on; I feel like I’m doing an okay job on preparing him as best I can. He’s super excited about everything, but I know the fickle nature of a preschooler: it’s inevitable there will be some challenges along the way. So, what sorts of gear can help make it all a little easier? I’m hoping you guys can help me out, especially those of you with experience traveling with children. Here are some items I’m looking at:
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Baby books get filtered over time:  they come into the house via shopping and gifts, and then some of them become favorites and others get donated to the library.  Here are the ones that have been most successful at our house (through FIVE children now), and which I may or may not have purchased for my impending niece (she was due YESTERDAY, and doesn’t seem to care about the 10-cent-a-day overdue fee):

Maisy’s Bedtime, written and illustrated by Lucy Cousins.  We’re on our second copy of this one:  the first copy finally fell apart.  Maisy puts on her pajamas, loses and finds her stuffed Panda, reads a story, and pees on the potty.  Heart-stopping drama!
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Do you realize that Christmas Eve is one week from today?  I’m making a list of gifts that have been given to ME in the past year, gifts that were a success and that you might want to consider buying for someone on your list.

My brother and sister-in-law gave me several pairs of earrings from the Etsy shop Kneehighs-n-Pigtails, and I LOVE them.  They’re so classy and dressy if you’re looking classy and dressy, but they look chic and awesome with t-shirt and jeans, too.
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I am not saying that good things don’t come in small packages, because of COURSE they do.  But sometimes a $20 CD can look, well, smaller than $20.  And sometimes a $20 throw blanket can look bigger than $20.

If you’re cutting down on gift spending this year, you might want to get more bang for your buck, as it were, by saving yourself money—and also giving the recipient a way to save some money themselves.  Or you might be trying to snow your in-laws into thinking you spent more than you did.  I’m not going to look too closely at your motivations, I’m just going to give you some big-looking, small-costing ideas that happen to go along with all the things people say they’re doing to save money these days.
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My oldest two kids are technically old enough to brush their own teeth now, but they do a crappy job. Our compromise is this: they brush their own teeth in the morning before school (with me calling out from the other room, “Are you getting the BACKS? Get EVERY surface of EVERY tooth please!”), and I brush their teeth for them before bed. And then there are three more kids, so the Toothbrushing Line is a significant chunk of our bedtime routine.

One thing that’s made things easier for me is having the kids LIE DOWN while I brush their teeth. I got this idea from the dentist—not in that he suggested it, but in that I noticed that’s how HE did it. And indeed, it is way superior: the toothpaste doesn’t drizzle down their chins, it’s easier to see the top and back teeth and to get at them, it’s easier for the kids to open their mouths wide, it’s easier to keep their heads still.
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Last time, we talked about books for the kids to read this summer.  My plan, when I have fewer demanding teeny-sized children, is to have all of us doing our reading together, at the same time, the house quiet except for the turning of pages.  Blissful little fantasy, yes?  I’m pretending it wouldn’t be broken by two of the children making each other laugh giddily and another child springing up saying “I JUST NEED TO GO TO THE BATHROOM!!” and another child asking “What does this word say?  What does THIS word say?  What does THIS word say?”

What I look for in a book for myself is something light enough for me to manage it on half-power and in 5-minute reading sessions, but not so light I gag and roll my eyes and feel like the writer thinks women are only interested in brand-name shoes, exceptionally good-looking men who are also tender and selfless, and the “because I deserve to spoil myself!” concept.  I don’t want to see the whole plot stretching before me by the end of the first chapter, and I don’t want a love interest so perfect he’s clearly fake.  I don’t want a lead female character who spends too many paragraphs discussing her weight/shoes, and I don’t want her to be in the fashion/publishing industry because ENOUGH ALREADY with those.
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Two years ago when Rob had just finished first grade, his teacher sent home materials stating that children lose significant educational ground over the summer. I don’t remember how much ground exactly (waves hand dismissively in “who can keep track of these little details?” manner), but it was enough to impress me. The teacher said that having children read on their own for half an hour a day would keep this loss from occurring—a sort of “sow grass to decrease erosion” for the mind.

One reason I was glad to hear this is that I’d worried “telling children to read” would make reading seem like a chore to them. I’d worked up a nice full-figured fret about it, to the point that I didn’t even want to suggest they read a book, lest it turn them into Booky McHatersons later on in life. But now I had permission from a fully-qualified educator to institute Mother’s Dreadful Reading Hour our daily reading time.
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My firstborn, Rob, asked about the facts of life pretty early. He is sort of child we describe as “having an inquiring mind” (we save “OMG, he just BEATS ME DOWN with questions until I can’t stand it another SECOND and have to pretend I need to pee so I can hide in the bathroom for a few minutes!” for later, when he’s asleep) and so I did have to decide what he was ready to hear, but I didn’t have to decide when to bring it up.

My secondborn, Will, is less inquisitive. He is going into second grade next year, and it occurs to me that we haven’t had any kind of Talk yet. Rob knew the basic scoop by now, because of the asking and asking and ASKING, but I suspect Will would just as soon not discuss it.  That makes two of us.

I’m working from scratch here:  I need to decide when to tell Will, and I need to decide HOW.  For Rob, as I said, I started by answering his questions, a method which can be tricky:  it involves trying to figure out what they’re REALLY asking.  Is “the baby starts to grow in a special kind of tummy” a sufficient answer, or is he really asking HOW-how?  Is “in a special kind of tummy” sufficient, or is it time to bring out the word uterus?  And so on.  It’s a topic that doesn’t have one single correct answer for every family, or even necessarily for every child within a family.

When I felt Rob was ready for what I think of as The Basics (bringing out the real words and explaining some mechanics), I used
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Last summer I went on a car trip with a toddler and a newborn. Um, that was really fun! As you might imagine!

One thing that made a world of difference was the DVD player. Sweet, peaceful Steve bought us several happy hours during the day in the car, particularly toward the end of the day when traffic got bad and no one was in the mood for another car game or car song. I really, REALLY recommend an in-car DVD player of some sort (and a few fresh DVDs) if you are driving a long distance.

Toys for long trips are tricky. Ideally they should be hand-held, one-piece, non-messy, non-noisemaking, and long-entertaining. It’s hard to hit all those bases, but here are a few that came close.
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