Traveling with baby

Traveling with baby

Air travel with babies (kids) is never easy. When I used to travel for work, I would carry one small bag that fit into the overhead bin and call it a day. I had the TSA checkpoints down to a science, such as undoing my shoes and already getting my little toiletry baggies out before I even got to the conveyer belt for the x-ray machines. But baby has changed all of that. Now I'm that harried, haggard person standing there in line hoping that you all won't be mad at me as I rummage through the diaper bag to find all the food that I now need to declare, figure out what to do with my toddler who wants to toddle and not stay put, and then handle the stroller and the carseat expertly with one hand. Seriously, babies have a lot of gear and even traveling light, you can't avoid most of the stuff.

Here are some products I used on my most recent travels that made life a lot easier (note: I'm not sponsored by any of the products I'm mentioning and I don't get any commission etc if you click on the links, which lead to Amazon, btw).

* Enfamil Premium Infant Single-Serve Powder Packets: I usually pour pre-measured powder into bottles and then add water as needed, but one thing I found with travel is that with all the hectic running around, bottles aren't always dry when I need them to be. So now I use these pre-packaged packets where I can dump the powder into the bottle of water when needed and not worry about lugging around the giant tub of formula around. It also means that if a bottle is wet when I hit the road, no worries, since I'll be putting the powder in just before baby needs it.

I've really only used Enfamil so I have no idea if the competing brands like Gerber and Similac have such a product, but it's worth checking into. Also, these are pretty pricey compared to powder tubs (which are pricey to begin with!) but are worth it for the convenience. 
  
There are also pre-made formulas out there in single servings, but I avoided them after hearing a horror story from one of the moms in my playgroup. Apparently, TSA needed to test the formula after they opened it, she had to dump it out and as a result, she had no food for the flight and had to go home. I do expect TSA to have to test powder (though on 6 flights so far -- 3 roundtrips), the most TSA has done is look at the tub of powder and wave a wand at it. However, even if they take a scoop of powder out for testing, the remaining is still good to use. So I'd avoid the pre-made formula, just to be safe.

* Medela Steam Bags: These bags are great for sterilization on the road. All you need is some water and a microwave and a lot of hotels now have microwaves in the room. I know sterilization isn't particularly necessary anymore but it's just something that I feel good about doing, especially when I know that the bottle cleaning might not be going as well as it might at home. And it's a decent value -- about $5 for 100 uses.

* Plum Organics Baby Food: I just used Plum Organics extensively (they were on sale at Babies R Us for a $1/pack -- usually run around $1.50 to $1.60 normal price), so hence my recommendation. There are other brands that come in a sack like this. The bottom line is that these are super easy to travel  with since there is no worry about glass breaking and baby can easily suck the food out of the package so there's the added benefit of not needing to travel with silverware and dishes.

I packed enough food for the flight into a small generic cooler bag and purchased a bottle of water after passing through security. Incidentally, on one of my flights, I pre-filled the bottles with the appropriate amount of water and  went through security and they let me through. I believe TSA allows you to bring as much food and water as required to feed the baby for the flight, but still be prepared to dump any water out or have TSA look/scan the food appropriately. 

Once on the plane, I put the diaper bag up in the overhead bin and then put the cooler on the seat next to me. That way I had all of the food right there and I wouldn't have to bother my seatmate to get it. I also purchased a new toy for the flight but baby wasn't particularly interested in that or in any of my Kindle apps that I downloaded for her. She just wanted to pull magazines etc out of the seat pocket in front of us.

On my next trip, I plan to use the Travelmate and see how it works. Currently, I'm using a Graco Infant Carrier with the infant stroller frame (BTW, this stroller is awesome; I didn't know about it until after baby was born but it really is life-changing compared to the behemoth travel system stroller we purchased). We'll see how that goes!

Clarification

I realize my previous post might have sounded like I was anti-breast feeding, and I'm not. It's just that it's difficult, far more difficult than I expected, and it does feel like a marathon -- just one more mile to go, one more, if I can make it to that next marker. We've all been in that position and I wrote that post at a time when I was really mentally, physically and emotionally struggling with breastfeeding. I think we owe it to women to be truthful about the experience, that it's NOT for everyone, and it's not the end all and be all if you don't breastfeed. I think this last point is really what I wanted to get at.

There's such pressure and guilt put on mothers by society and other women regarding this topic that any deviation for whatever reason feels like a major failure. It's not a failure to say breastfeeding isn't for you. Feeding is such one piece of a complex algorithm on how one raises her (and his! fathers included!) child and there's no surefire way that everything you do is going to be exactly right on setting your child on the way to Bill Gates awesomeness. There are so many questions to answer along the way, so many decisions to be made. So as plaintive that post sounded, I needed to say what I said, and I'm calmer and more reassured about the decision I made. And that's all any parent can really do.

Deep thought of the Day

Does Celo Green live at NBC? So far this year, we've seen him on the following shows, all NBC:

* The Voice
* The Today Show
* Parenthood
* The Macy's Parade
* Super Bowl Half Time Show

He may have also been on America's Got Talent, but I can't quite remember. The point is, Celo Green is on NBC a lot, so I don't know why I was surprised when he showed up during halftime during tonight's ballgame. Next time you see him, specifically when you see him on NBC, take a drink!

LotD

Hidden images in famous logos. I'm super tired tonight for reasons that are neither here nor there but cannot yet go back to sleep due to waiting on a phone call. This article amused me and killed made time go a little bit more quickly (seriously, time crawls when you wake up jarringly from a dead sleep and then need to stay awake for at least another hour).

Things that make you go hmmm

Our taxes are done and not surprisingly, we paid more in taxes than GE in 2010. Now if only our income matched theirs...

Deep thoughts

The Pandora jewelry collection is not pretty.

Ideear

The show will be called "Baggage Wars" and 100 to 150 contestants will compete to get bags of various sides into the overhead bins on an airplane. Bonuses will be given to contestants who succeed stuffing not only an oversized bag, an huge personal item, and a jacket into the bins. Extra extra points will be given to contestant who holds up the line by rearranging all the bags in an overhead bin in order to get their bag in. Points will be subtracted if anyone uses the space beneath the seat in front of them.

Hmmm

Now that the tax compromise has passed, I expect to see lots and lots of hiring in first quarter 2011. Now that the 'uncertainty' is over (and let's be real, did anyone honestly think Congress would let the Bush tax cuts expire?), there should be no more excuses on why companies aren't hiring.

LotD

Vanity Fair had an interesting article, The Simple Solution to America's Unemployment Problem. It caught my attention because I've been thinking lately, is Big Business really good for you and me? I haven't completely formulated my thoughts on the subject because I can see the pro and cons of the equation, but I can tell you think: hiring people and paying them a liveable wage cuts in profits.

Profits are what are important to companies. They want to make money and so if they can't make their sales, they cut their spending. People are among the easiest assets to let go. And my great fear these days is that with businesses doing more with less, the incentive to hire is so low. I mean, if they've got someone who can do the job of three people, that's a cost savings to the company and an improved bottomline. Who's going to go through the expense of hiring when you don't need to?

Anyway, it's an interesting rant and much to think about. We think Big Business is good for America, for us the little people, but is Big Business making their decisions with America in mind?

Deep thoughts

I can't believe that a singer as talented as Martina McBride couldn't come up with a better ditty for her Sunny-D commercial than the repetitious "Shine on, shine on..." No matter how melodious your singing voice, it still sounds lazy.

Olympics

I love the Olympics, watch every minute of coverage, and while I LOVE it when Team USA wins, I really love it when ANYONE wins. Which I guess is silly as someone wins every event in the Olympics. What I meant is, I love seeing the reactions on the gold medalist's face when they realize the culmination of a life-long goal. It's awesome. Team USA is my favorite, obviously, but it was so cool to see the Canadian downhill skiier win Canada's first gold on home soil. While I was so pumped to see Evan Lysacek win the men's ice-skating because he clearly had the skate of his life, I was more pumped that trash-talking Yvegeny Plushenko had to take silver.

I definitely prefer winter Olympics to the summer, but the winter Olympics are more painful to watch. The crashes are spectacular, and in some of them, it's amazing these athletes pick themselves up and walk away. In some events, they crash and a few minutes later, they're back on the slopes/ice as if nothing happened to them. I insist on being completely pampered if I have so much as a hangnail, so I'm in awe of this ability to just shrug off these spectacular tumble. I guess that's the difference between Olympians and the rest of us.

Worst nightmare

Okay, so one of them, but here it is:

Taylor Swift, the Kings of Leon, and Colbie Caillet singing that Firefly song a capella on "The Sing Off" with Jenna Wolfe from the Sunday "Today" show as one of the judges. And oh yeah, Nicole Scherzinger stays and constantly says in her monotone, "That was so hot, you were really hot..."

Opinion

I think it would be a very, very bad idea fo Hillary Clinton to interfere in anyway in the Amanda Knox verdict. It's one thing to intercede on the behalf of hikers in Iran who might have been apprehended unfairly or the journalists in North Korea or the father whose son was kidnapped to Brazil, but it's another thing entirely to interfere in another's country judicial system (thoughts about that aside). There is no strategic national security involved, there's no question of apprehension under vague circumstances, and the defendent was well represented in court.

LotD

Scary article from the NY Times - Driven to Distraction - At 60 M.P.H.. Honestly, I can barely flip radio stations and drive at the same time, let alone check email/voice mails etc. I suppose most people who are like me put the cell phones away while driving, while everyone else is talking on the phone or texting and thinking they're doing just fine.

It scares me I'm on the road with people who are this reckless and careless. As my earlier saga with the car illustrated this past summer, people are trying to save themselves 10 to 20 minutes but in the meantime are costing the rest of us time and as this article points out, sometimes something much worse.

The article also comes with a game to test how distracted you are while driving and texting. I failed miserably. I can't text when I'm parked and concentrating 100% on the text, let alone while driving.

However, as I said, I think people who realize the dangers have already put away their cell phones. Everyone else thinks they're invincible or better than everyone else and nothing you say will ever convince them otherwise.

Scary stuff.

Things that make me go huh

Is it just me or does the Dodge Charger remind anyone else of a shark? Seriously, every time I see one -- and I've been seeing a lot of them lately on Sweat Sock City highways -- I hear the "JAWS" theme. Please tell me it's not just me.

Mystery on the Bayou

Don't mind me, but I'm reading Agatha Christie again, and I've got this habit of turning everything and everyone around me into a story. On another time, I'll tell you about how I turned a simple outing to a Vietnamese sandwich shop into an undercover sting operation for a mafioso. But this mystery is closer to home, or rather two doors down. My neighbor has been evicted. Or rather, eviction papers were served a few days ago -- posted on her door, and I'm nosy so I looked -- but she moved out a couple weeks ago.

Until recently my neighbor and I had a cordial relationship. She moved in a few months before I did, so we've lived -- separated by one apartment -- on this hall for the last six years. We weren't close, but we knew each other's names and we occasionally had conversations in the hall. This was all before she went really and totally crazy.

It started with the simple shredding of menus that are annoyingly left on our doors. Then one day when I drove up in my car and parked next to hers (leaving a wide gap), she flipped out on me, using some choice four letter words. Her issue with my parking? I usually park on the first floor of our parking garage and then climb up to our floor, but due to chronic foot problems, I started parking on the same level as the apartment to avoid the impact of the stairs on my feet. The point was -- she took offense at my parking on our floor instead of my usual first floor parking, even though we don't have assigned parking in our garage (she did pay a monthly fee for an assigned spot though). She came out and apologized a few minutes later but I was spooked enough that I moved my car several parking spots away from her. We never spoke again.

Her behavior slowly escalated from shredding menus in the hallway to leaving strange post-it notes on her door with messages like "DO NOT ENTER; MY APARTMENT IS ALARMED." She then started leaving notes in the garage, some of them pretty offensive. One day she was walking around the garage in what seemed to be her underwear, but was really just a tanktop over her bikini. I found this odd because the pool is over there and not over here and most women cover-up when not around the immediate pool area. About two weeks before she moved out, she left post-it notes and flowers on my Prius; all of the notes were essentially incoherent saying things like "I've given all my stuff to the Salvation Army." I wish I had kept them now because I don't really remember anymore than that one note out of the six posted on my car. In retrospect, I wonder if there was a message there for me, some sign I should have paid more attention too.

It was alarming and I was contemplating saying something to the apartment office. I spoke to Florida Girl, who is a mental health professional in the ER, and asked what was up. She said that my neighbor's behavior sounded suspiciously like someone who was off her meds -- i.e. going from normal to crazy in no time flat. She asked if my neighbor had lost her job recently and I said I didn't know; we hadn't spoken since her four-letter word barrage. Florida Girl said she was seeing a lot of cases in the ER that were similar to what I was describing -- people had lost their jobs, couldn't afford their medications and/or were spacing the dosage out to make the medication last longer, and the results could be dangerous.

Anyway, my neighbor is gone. She has moved out and I'm not going to know what happened here. I'm assuming that she lost her job, went off medication (if she had been on medication), and then fled when she could no longer pay rent. Clearly the apartment complex didn't know she was gone if they left eviction notes on her door. I'm definitely sad because I don't like how our acquaintance ended, but at the same time, her behavior was so odd and alarming that I couldn't help but keep my distance. While I knew something was wrong, I also didn't feel like we were close enough or that I knew her well enough to ask what was up or offer any assistance. Mea culpa.

PSA

I can't remember if I've said this before, but even so, it bears repeating: if one eats fish (seafood), one is not a vegetarian. If one eats any thing that once had a face -- whether it's a chicken or a worm or a seahorse -- one is not a vegetarian. I really, really wish this trend would stop. I can't even count how many people have said, "Oh I'm vegetarian, but I love tuna salad and eat it every day," or something to that effect. People who shun all meat except for seafood (or any other one variety) are not vegetarians. It makes so hard for REAL vegetarians because people think we eat fish, and are shocked (SHOCKED!) when they find out that's not the case. Real vegetarians don't eat anything that once had a face. Vegans don't eat anything that once had a face and also skip eggs and dairy.

Hope that clears things up.

Socialite

What I like about Facebook is that in certain applications, it bears no resemblance to real life. Everyone talks about the status updates and the whole reconnecting with people from high school and middle school, but WHAT ABOUT THE GAMES? Only on Facebook can I have a dog (I strongly dislike dogs), a farm (I like the concept of gardening, but dirt on my hands makes me a little crazy), a restaurant (just awesome), and I can also spend time as a fashionista (which I'm not in RL).

On Facebook, I also can own a house with a windmill in the front yard and I have a job in Yoville, but I'm not quite sure what it is I do there (I seem to dance and laugh and joke with various friends -- if only I could turn that into a paying gig in RL!). At various points, I get to travel abroad in something called Kidnapped! and there's also a Mafia War going on. For a while, I was deeply embroiled in a Parking War. I also have a kingdom of my own and apparently my vassals are restless for my return; I don't know what is they expect me to do.

Right now the restaurant game is my favorite. It runs slowly and it's rather high maintenance (actually, all of the virtual life games are high maintenance); not quite feasible for someone who check the site every few days or so. It's like I go and plant crops on my farm, but by the time I return to harvest them, they're all dead. So the only solution is to keep coming back and that, my friends, is the ingenuity of Facebook. After all, you'd feel guilty too if your virtual dog was pawing at you for attention because you happened to have an attack of RL along the way. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think have a war or three to fight.

Job hunting

Everyone has advice on how to find a job in this economy. I've got advice too, but more along the lines of "this has worked for me in the past." Your mileage may vary. I should note that the current job hunt has attracted many job offers in the form of "work from home" and "start your own business working part-time." It's mildly discouraging, but necessary evil. I try to keep my spirits up by reminding myself that the last time the economy was bad -- 2003 -- it took me about 3 months from the day I graduated to the day I started my new job. And I'm lucky, comparatively, as I live in a part of the country that isn't hurting as badly. But still, it's not easy.

That being said, here's how I'm doing it:

1. I use job boards. I know people frown on them, but my last three jobs were found through journalismjobs.com, hotjobs.com, and careerbuilder.com, respectively. Prior to that, I applied for my job at Very Big Insurance Company through a newspaper ad. I also use monster.com (have gotten interviews in the past through monster.com, but no job) and jobfox.com as well. There's also a search engine, indeed.com, that can help round up the jobs available on a variety of other niche boards. LinkedIn.com also has job boards, but I've no experience on whether that site is any better than any other.

2. I write cover letters. Each cover letter is specific to the job I'm applying for. I tell the person where I found the job and why I think I'm a good fit, citing experiences that fit with the job description. It used to take a longer time to write these, but now I have a lot of general cover letters written and I just tweak each one accordingly.

3. Spell check!

4. I only use one resume. I know they say you're supposed to have different resumes for different jobs, but at this point, my experience and skills are aimed at such a niche area of the job market that I only use one. I may reconsider this one in about a month if I don't get anywhere.

5. I keep a spreadsheet of every job I apply to. I started this spreadsheet back in the summer of 2003 and it has basically every job I've ever applied to since then. It's kind of sad, really. But it keeps me sane, in a way, and makes me feel like I'm doing something since I really haven't gotten any responses except 3 (1 headhunter who forwarded my resume, and two outright rejections). The spreadsheet acts as a measure of activity. I keep track of when I applied for the job, the company, the location, where I found the job online, and what the results were. It also keeps me straight on whether I've applied somewhere or not before.

6. The old me used to apply for any job whether I was qualified for it or not. I figure quantity over quality. The end result was I'd have to apply for 50 jobs before I got one interview. Now, I only apply for jobs that I'm actually qualified for. If it asks for an engineering degree or Ruby on Rails, I don't apply, even if I can do everything else listed on the description. Applications take forever to fill out and I don't want to waste my time or the hiring company's time when it's obvious I don't meet key criteria.

7. I still follow my loose adage that it takes 50 applications to get one interview. That's another sanity check, because it's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you're going to get an interview right away and keep checking email on hourly basis thinking someone is going to respond. I haven't reached the 50 application market yet, so I'm not discouraged yet.

It is hard slogging. But as my 2-year old niece once said, "But then it will be better."

Psssst....

All you people on your cell phones who think you are driving really, really well? No, no, you're not. And yes, we can tell that you're talking on your phone while you're driving -- it's that obvious. So cut it out already. You're not cool, you're dangerous.