One of the best things about toddlers is how fun they are. They are completely uninhibited and full of creativity and energy. They learn, and learn, and learn some more and love every minute of it. Having fun with your toddler can range from a planned activity to just cuddling and giggling in bed. It can range from playing, to going outside, to family vacations, to cooking together. This post pulls together some great ideas for having fun with your toddlers.

Play

Nurture Store came up with a great list of Top 5 Toddler Play Ideas especially for the Carnival of Toddlers. Head over there to read more about how to:

• Make your play space toddler friendly
• Encourage super sensory play
• Boost your toddler’s language skills
• Play grown-up
• Be inspired

On that last point, there is so much inspiration out there. Some great places to look include The PhD in Parenting Carnival of Play and my friend Allie’s great craft blog No Time for Flash Cards.  Do you like paint and play dough? If so, check out these recipes and ideas from Sixty Second Parent and Nurture Store. When you’re all done, it is time to clean up those toys and Code Name Mama has some great tips on getting your toddlers to help pick up.

Go Outside

I think one of the most important things is for toddlers to have the opportunity to go outside and play in an unstructured and exploratory environment. Let them roll the grass, pick up leaves, stroke the bark of the tree, watch the ants walking around, gaze at the clouds, and more. If you’re looking for fun ideas for things to do outside (even in the rain!), check out my Carnival of Play posts on outdoor play.

Travel

A lot of people are scared to travel with toddlers. Don’t be afraid! It can be a lot of fun, as Corinne from Have Baby Will Travel will tell you. Her website is full of amazing resources for parents who want to travel with their babies and toddlers. Codename Mama also has a list of ideas to help make travel with toddlers easier. We’ve done both structured and unstructured vacations with our kids, ranging from resorts to camping and from Europe to Cuba.

The important thing is to respect your toddler’s pace and abilities and come up with a plan that is flexible and keeps their needs in mind. Every destination has tons of great things to do with toddlers, from more structured options (like Children’s museums) to impromptu activities (like counting the stairs on the steps of a Cathedral). Travelling with a toddler is the best way to ensure that you stop to smell the roses along the way, whether you are exploring a world far from home or just the next town over.

Cook and Bake

Do you like to cook with your toddler? Involving your toddler in the food process can be one great way to get them interested in eating. Two of my readers like to get their toddlers involved in the meal planning. Check out the great meals that Housewife’s Utopia and Life With Roozle’s toddlers came up with.

I don’t do a lot of cooking with my kids, but we love to bake together. It has become a weekend tradition and now I often have to bake with one of them on Saturday and the other one on Sunday so that they both get a turn. Whether it is granola bars, zucchini muffins, or leftover cereal cookies, they love being able to help measure and mix and of course they’re happy to taste test once things are done.

As you are cooking, think about incorporating some of Sixty Second Parent’s ideas for exploring the senses of smell and taste.

How Do You Have Fun With Your Toddler?

This is just a beginning. There are, of course, so many things that you can do with your toddler. Reading was another important fun activity with my kids. What other fun ideas do you have for hanging out with your toddler?

Toddler Carnival Sponsor

 Photo credits: Toddler with bubbles from abbybatchelder on flickr.

Malaysian Airlines has announced that it is banning babies from First Class on some of its flights. However, there appears to be a lot of back pedaling in the explanations of the reasons behind this move.

A couple of days ago, AOL Business News wrote:

First-class passengers aboard some Malaysia Airlines flights won’t have to worry about being woken up by a crying baby anymore.

The airline has banned infants in first class of its Boeing 747-400 jets, and has plans to do the same in their new Airbus A380 superjumbo jets, the Australian Business Traveller reported.

Initially, news reports were saying that the baby ban was due to crying babies disrupting passengers who had paid a very high price for their first class ticket. These reports apparently came from a June 20 tweet from the CEO of Malaysian Airlines, Tengku Azmil:

However, Malaysian Airlines later back pedaled and said this wasn’t the real reason for the ban. The Australian Business Traveller quoted a media statement that was issued by Malaysian Airlines explaining the ban:

Bassinet facilities were originally available in the First, Business and Economy class zones of the 747’s. In 2003, Malaysia Airlines embarked on a revamp of First and Business class cabin of the B747s. The First class seat configuration was reduced from 18 to 12 for passengers to enjoy increased cabin space and extended legroom.

Each new seat came with an electrically operated ottoman that doubles as a visitor seat and could convert to a lie-flat bed with the main seat. As a result of this seat revamp and the introduction of the ottoman, there was no facility for positioning bassinets in the First Class of the B747s.

The further explained that infants were still welcome in Economy and Business Class (if anything, it would seem like “business class” would be the appropriate section to ban babies from, if you were going to do so at all).

Where is the Logic?

At this point, I was very confused. No babies in first class, because there are no bassinets there?

• First, as far as I know, most airlines only have a few bassinets available (usually the bulkhead seats). However, parents with infants are generally welcome to book seats without bassinets and just hold their babies on their laps. This is what we did on most flights with our babies.
• Second, the bassinets are only good for very small newborns. By the age of six months, both of my babies were too heavy for them. On the dozens of flights that we took with our babies under two years old, we simply held them. We only used the bassinet on one flight, for a period of 15 minutes while we ate our meals. They slept better (and disturbed fewer people), when they were in a ring sling on my chest than when they were in a bassinet anyway.
• Third, safety advocates say that the safest place for a baby on the flight is in its car seat in its own seat on the plane. While plane tickets are very expensive (especially in first class) and many people do opt to have a lap baby, there are others who always purchase a seat for their baby.

Overall, based on those three factors, I would say that the percentage of babies that actually use the bassinets on airplanes is quite small. Therefore, not having the bassinets in First Class would not be a real reason to ban babies from first class.If it was, wouldn’t they also have to ban babies from any seat that does not have a bassinet in other parts of the plane? Is a bassinet mandatory equipment for babies on Malaysian Airlines?

In case you are thinking that this can’t really be true, check out the update in the post on Have Baby, Will Travel, in which the Malaysian Airlines CEO is quoted as saying: “We do not take infants in 1st Class whether on their own seat or on the lap.” So this isn’t just about the bassinets.

Are Babies Really the Most Annoying Passengers?

I know that a lot of babies do cry on take-off and landing due to the pressure on their ears. That is generally a very short component of the flight. Some babies do cry at other points in the flight, but they certainly do not have a monopoly on annoying noise. In fact, the loudspeaker on the planes that has to remind you about Duty Free Service when you are trying to sleep is probably the most annoying sound to me, followed closely by the people who laugh out loud at the movie while wearing headphones and not realizing how loud they are. Beyond noise, there are the people who put their seats back (even when it isn’t night time) leaving me with no space to move, the people who use both arm rests, the people who bring and eat their own disgusting smelling snacks, the people who hover in the aisle right next to your seat, and so on.

Personally, I found it very easy to travel with my babies. As soon as they made a peep, I would nurse them or give them a pacifier. They were generally quite easy to keep happy and quiet. Toddlers, on the other hand, were a handful. They would squawk, cry, scream, kick the seat in front of them, push on the seat in front of them, constantly ask to walk up and down the aisle, and so on. Transatlantic overnight flights with my toddlers were fine because they slept, but coming back home when we were confined for 7 hours and they were awake, was a horror.

However, the Malaysian Airlines CEO has no problem with toddlers in First Class:

Are you as confused as I am?

Why are babies really being banned by Malaysian Airlines? Their explanation about the bassinets makes no sense at all. My guess is it is just to pander to the illogical sensitivities of some very rich passengers in an attempt to capture their business. For their sake, I hope that the babies in the first row of the section right behind First Class end up being the noisiest babies imaginable.

Want to read more on this topic? Check out Kristina Chew’s great piece on Care2: Airline Bans Babies in 1st Class: In Search of Cry-Free Skies

Photo credit: Scott and Elaine van der Chijs on flickr

I love photogenic museums. When we were in Berlin, I took tons of photos at the Deutsche Kinemathek museum, which has a spectacular building and gorgeous exhibits. Today we visited the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta and I snapped a few pics.

Happy New Year to all of my readers. We’re enjoying a cold weather vacation right now in Alberta.

As most people probably know, the TSA has ramped up its security screening recently. There is an excellent description of the situation in my fellow Care2 blogger Robin Marty’s post Groped or Nudie Pics: TSA asks which method you prefer. It describes children being patted down as they scream and beg for it to stop. It includes links to the stories of women, including rape survivors, describing what amounts to a sexual assault as they had their breasts, their buttocks and their labia felt by TSA agents. Later posts describe a flight attendant and breast cancer survivor being forced to remove her prosthetic breast. All of this is being done in the name of safety. If it were true that it would make us safer, perhaps we could have the debate about whether it is worth giving up all personal dignity in order to increase safety. But it isn’t. The TSA hasn’t caught a single terrorist trying to board a plane. There are other methods, like Israel’s, that are considered more effective, more efficient, and less invasive.

I think the TSA guidelines and procedures are scary, unnecessary and abusive. But what is even more outrageous than those policies is the amount of power that TSA agents yield and the frequent absence of knowledge about their own guidelines and procedures. A lot of people are saying, don’t blame the poor TSA agents for these horrible policies because it isn’t their fault. That is true, but it is their fault when they do not know their own policies and when they mistreat and harass travellers who ask them to follow those guidelines. One example is the pregnant and breastfeeding mother in this video who was transporting breastmilk home to her baby and requested the alternate screening for medical liquids (which includes breastmilk), which she is allowed to do under TSA guidelines. She even had a printed copy of those guidelines with her, but that did her no good as she was held captive, harassed and missed her flight.

This is one of the reasons why I vacation in Cuba and Europe with my children instead of in the United States. They want to go to Disney World one day, but I don’t think they should be subject to a nightmare in order to realize their dreams. The TSA is just one more example of American “authorities” abusing their power and severely lacking judgment as they carry out their duties. I wrote about another example previously in my post called Shaking the Bush out of America, but apparently this goes far beyond Bush’s stupid policies.

Fear of terrorists, illegal immigrants or whatever else Americans are afraid of is not an excuse to stop treating people like human beings.

Note: There is an update and more information available on Sustainable Mothering.

When people have lived in the same place for a long time, they often settle into a routine. They go to the same places with the same friends, filling their calendars with repeat performances. There is a lot of comfort in the familiar, but it can get boring after a while. I know that we often do the same things over and over in Ottawa, but when we were thrown out of our comfort zone and into Berlin for a 4 month adventure, we found ourselves out discovering new things every day — often things that our friends in Berlin had never heard of before.

If you are getting bored of the same old routine in Ottawa, then it is time for you to check out the group blog Kids in the Capital. This great idea founded by Brie and Lara features great activities and outings with kids in Ottawa, as well as information on play dates (with and without the kids!). For those of you in Calgary, you can check out the new Kids in Cowtown blog too!

In any case, I’m happy to introduce you all to Kids in the Capital today because it is a great blog and because I have a guest post up on our outing to McLaurin Bay last weekend. If you are hoping to get outside with the kids this Thanksgiving weekend, this is a great spot to combine some playing (it has a great playground) with some nature (there is a great short hike through the woods and the bay). Go check out my post on McLaurin Bay along with pictures and a description of what you can find there. If you do check it out, be sure to let me know what you think.

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian readers!

I certainly don’t wear her everyday anymore, but on a challenging hike through rough terrain, she still gets to ride. Our go to carrier at this point for longer walks is the Catbird Baby Pikkolo.

(Yes, I’m a bit red in that last picture. That was quite a climb with an extra 37 pounds on my back.)

Photo credit: Our friend Derek who joined us on the hike

Disclosure: Catbird Baby is an advertiser on my site. However, this is not a paid post and I have owned this carrier (which I paid for myself) since before I even started this blog.

Today I took the kids to Deutsche Kinemathek, the German museum for television and film. It is located in the spectacular Sony Center at historic Potsdamer Platz.

Spectacular Building and Exhibits

The permanent exhibits of the museum are displayed in a spectacular building and assembled in an incredibly attractive manner. Although my kids weren’t interested in all that much of the information in the main exhibits (other than the small component on some kids TV shows and kids movies), they were impressed and entertained by the building itself. There are large screens and small screens throughout the exhibits showing different clips and tons of mirrors that reflect things over and over again.

The small bits of information I was able to take in while being chased through by two kids was great. There were several rooms just on Marlene Dietrich. They had sections describing what happened to the film industry during Nazi Germany. They had a set-up of an Olympic stadium with pictures that were taken there and the stadium would light up to show you where the photographer who took the shot was located. They had sections on film, but also on news with clips from some of the most newsworthy items in recent and older history (my son got to see the plane flying into the World Trade Center – not sure if that is a good thing or not, but it certainly opened up a conversation).

In the Jungle Exhibition

The main reason that we went in today, without which we may not have discovered the rest of this amazing museum, was the In the Jungle exhibition that is currently running for the summer school break.

The exhibition had lots of opportunities for children to view clips from movies about the jungle, ranging from recent animated films (e.g. Jungle Book, Madagascar) to older German kids shows and movies to child-appropriate documentaries (e.g. one on children who were raised by animals, several on endangered species, etc.). The films were shown on large screens, on small screens with headphones attached, and in mini kid-sized viewing stations.

My kids were fascinated by a large map of the world that had a row of pictures of animals below it and a button that could be pushed for each animal. When you pushed on the button, you would hear a recording of the sound that animal makes and the map would light up showing the area where that animal lives. They loved discovering animals that were new to them (e.g. Strawberry dart frogs), old favourites (e.g. tigers), and animals they knew from movies (e.g. the Lemurs like King Julien from Madagascar).

There was also a multimedia exhibit about the ways in which the rain forest is threatened. One of the main issues raised was the unsustainable palm oil trade that threatens orangutans and other wildlife. The multimedia presentation even included a section on the Greenpeace campaign to get Nestle to stop using unsustainable palm oil in its Kit Kat bars and other chocolate.

Pictures

Here is a gallery with some pictures from the museum, showing off the great architecture that I mentioned above and some of the fun features from the kids museum. Sorry I couldn’t integrate them into the specific sections, but it apparently wordpress will only let you have one gallery per post and all the work-around plug-ins I tried failed me.

I would highly recommend this museum to anyone traveling to Berlin, especially if you are interested in film and television and architecture.

My online friend Nikki nursing topless in the Dominican Republic. Looking forward to meeting her in Berlin when she gets back from vacation.