Aluminum Foil and other Things.....

I used that title to strike your curiosity to check out my tips for hitting the parks and restaurants with children. Here is my story. Earlier today, I was putting away some aluminum foil that I had purchased at the store and started thinking about a trip to Disneyland that I took a few years ago. This drawer might not evoke a memory like that for everyone but it did for me. When my daughter was seven months old we took her to Disneyland for the first time. She had started eating baby food as well as some finger foods. The idea of her eating at a table on vacation didn't settle well with me. What we decided to do was to bring the Cling Wrap in our diaper bag. We learned that Cling Wrap sticks to the table and we could set her food out for her as if we were at home. I am not a germophobe but with the quick turnover of the tables at the parks and hotels I thought that this was a better choice than the paper placemat that some of the restaurants provided. The placemats would be sent to the floor along with anything that had been placed in front of her on the table. The Cling Wrap tended to stay on the table for most of the meal.
Another thing that we learned to do was to use the small items that hung down from the baby carrier/ car seat. We had three small bugs that were attached by Velcro to the car seat. We would wrap one of these small “bugs” to her wrist during the meal. This would allow her to play with something that she couldn’t simply drop to the floor. I was never a big fan of the drop and fetch it game and being in a restaurant was certainly no exception.
A third item that I came to count on was the disposable bib. I always washed and reused bibs when I was home. When I was on a vacation that had no immediate access to a washer and dryer I found this to be a quick and easy solution to what could have been a sticky smelly mess.
The final thing that is kept with the aluminum foil in my house to this day is Ziplock bags. I always travel with a large number of both sandwich bags and the gallon size bags. I am able to put dirty clothes and other items in these bags without worrying about where in the diaper bag they might go. I felt as if I benefited from these tips and wanted to pass them along.