Showing posts with label kiddos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kiddos. Show all posts

Friday, July 12, 2013

Flying With Toddlers

While we still have travel on the brain I thought I would share some tips and tricks of certain must-haves every parent needs while traveling with toddlers. As you saw here we recently flew to Virginia and Washington D.C. with les deux! The trip was definitely a lot of work with a one and two year old and only Danny and I, but if you have these essential items below, it will make for smoother sailings :)


photos via here

1. First off we have the beloved iPad. Daniel doesn't like to watch tv, but Sienna loves a great  Sophia the First episode or Elmo movie. I made sure to download a couple of surprise movies and shows onto the iPad before the trip to whip out when needed. If it can help keep one cranky toddler calm during a long flight, I'm all for it!

2. Next we have the One Step Ahead Ulti-Mite Umbrella Stroller. As much as we love our Bob Duallie, that beast is not made for flying. So a couple months prior to our trip I decided to get two umbrella strollers for traveling. Lucky for me I snagged two of these strollers with a 30% off coupon on Gilt one day and they came out to $50 for both! If you haven't signed up for Gilt, it's amazing, you can do it here. There were many times on our trip when I did miss by double stroller, but smaller is definitely better while on the go! And one also came in handy as a luggage carrier through the airport while Daniel was in the Ergo Baby carrier. 

3. And then we have my new favorite the kids' new favorite snacks, Plum Organics Teensy Fruits. These are soft fruit snack that hold to their name and are small and safe for Daniel to eat. The kiddos love them and fight over them so I have to separate their piles while snacking. My concern with flying was of course their ears so I brought lolli-pops, but they didn't keep them in their mouths long enough to soothe any ear discomfort. The fruit snacks kept them chewing and swallowing. Looking back we definitely looked like crazy first-time-flying-parents with how many packs we opened via takeoff. Hey...at least they had multiple servings of fruit in ten minutes!

4. Of course every mom needs a good crossbody while traveling. Having two free hands while juggling multiple boarding passes, IDs and toddlers is vital! I made sure to bring along my Kate Spade Cobble Hill Ellen crossbody. It's pink, perfect, and made travels with les deux easy breezy...

5. And last, but not least my fabulous Wet Ones travel pack! While traveling through airports no parent should be without these. The bathroom lines can be long and washing the their hands doesn't happen as much as I'd like.  Of course I had hand sanitizer which was in the carry-on zip-loc bag with all my liquids and I also packed travel packs of Clorox wipes. These are great for wiping down arm rests or any surfaces that just seem icky. 

My biggest piece of advice when flying with toddlers is to carry-on as little as possible. We had to carry WAY too much through the airport! Next time I will bring a diaper bag and MAYBE another carry-on, but it is worth it to check as much as possible. 

As hard as it was I can't wait to do it again! 

Do you have any tips on flying with littles?


Monday, July 8, 2013

Virginia Is For Lovers

For our first trip with les deux we headed up to Virginia for our best friend, Lindsay's, wedding. We decided to go ahead and make a vacation out of it so we stayed in Washington D.C. for two nights after. The last time Danny & I had visited Virginia was for our grade school D.C. trips so we had no idea what kinds of things we could do with the kids. After some recommendations and research I found a child friendly winery that we decided to visit. 
 
Thursday night we flew in so we would have all of Friday to do things. We went out to visit the Barrel Oak Winery and it was just amazing. I had no idea there was such beautiful scenery in Virginia...and great wine as well!
 






 ^^^If you know our family,
you know it's only fitting that there is a VW in the background :)
 
 
On Saturday, we had the wedding in the evening at another winery, The Farms at Hamilton Station Vineyards. Once again Virginia did not fail to please. The backdrop of the wedding ceremony was just breathtaking and made for such a beautiful moment.
 




The kids were a little rowdy so they had to watch the ceremony from afar.



The cocktail hour and reception were inside the rustic barn, but we spent most of the cocktail hour venturing the grounds with kiddos.





These kids could play with gravel all day if I let them...



After dinner Danny and the kiddos were chasing lighting bugs? or fireflies? Not sure what they are called, but we don't have these neat little things in Florida!


and we danced the night away...


 
Virginia was a wonderful time and we can't wait to go back! 
 
 

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Our First Travels With Les Deux


Hey ya'll! I know it's been pretty quiet around here, but we just stepped off of a little vacation with les deux. We went to Virginia for a wedding then spent two nights in Washington D.C.. Our itinerary was jam-packed  and I barely had time to breathe, let alone blog. This was the first plane ride for the littles and all I can say is we are glad to be home :) As much work as it was to take this trip, I really am glad we were able to make memories while traveling. 

Stay tuned for some posts about our trip, but here are some sneak peeks for now...


I did a stroller shot of les deux along the National Mall :)


Some post wedding ceremony adventures at the beautiful barn and winery!


and of course a little cupcake love (please excuse the rainy day hair)


Monday, June 24, 2013

Bathroom Must-Haves For Your Baby

 
 
via 
 
 
This morning we were invited to do a segment on our local news station FOX 13's morning show, Good Day Tampa Bay. The segment focused on some of our favorite must-haves for babies that you'll find in the bathroom.
 
Click here to see what we had to say :)
 
 

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Little Bookworms



Lately the kids having been loving going to the library. I have been making an effort to take them to story time every week since my local library offers a lot of different day and time options! After story time we take some time to read or checkout books and of course chase the kiddos down the aisles...

It really makes me happy how excited Sienna gets when we are going or when it's time to read our library books! There's nothing better than hearing her say, "Mommy get the library book bag and let's go!"

This week we checked out the perfect book for Father's Day called I Love My Daddy  by Sebastien Braun. Sienna picked it and loves it since she is such a daddy's girls. 
 




Have you checked out the reading programs for children at your library?


Friday, June 7, 2013

We Heart Hotel Tonight


About a year ago I stumbled across an app called Hotel Tonight, downloaded it, then paid it no attention until about six months later. Little did I know what a gem of an app it was! Here's the skinny on it: Every day at noon the app populates all of the current hotels that are available to book for that same night at an exceptional rate. The catch is you have to book it for the same night, hence the name, Hotel Tonight. There are certain hotels that allow you to book multiple nights if you would like to stay somewhere for a longer period of time. The hotels also change daily so you can't really plan to book a hotel that was on the app the day before because it's a mystery if it's going to be there the next day. 

Basically this app is for someone who loves to live a little on the wild side. Perfect for a family with two babies two and under, right? Right! We have used this app close to ten times since we discovered it and love every minute of it. We usually use the app to book a room at the beach so it's like a mini vacation. We've also used it in Orlando where Danny had a work conference and we switched hotels the second night to be closer to Downtown Disney. 

This past week we booked a stay at the Tradewinds Guy Harvey Outpost (our favorite local getaway)  through Hotel Tonight:










Traveling spontaneously with the littles really can be fun and all of this Hotel Tonighting has prepped us for all our big travel plans :) 

Click here to see some more photos from our stay.





Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Pick Me! Pick Me!

During an aimless Instagram blog-stalk session recently, I stumbled across this site called Top Baby Blogs. Usually I think these type of voting sites could be borderline cheesy, but I actually found some great blogs on  it! So I figured why not, let me just add myself too!!

Now anytime while you're reading Life With Les Deux and feel the need to scream at the top of your lungs that this is the BEST BABY BLOG EVER, just go ahead and click on the handy little button on my side bar that looks like this...



Go ahead, click it...it works! Help make Life With Les Deux reach the top of the list! We are at 185 so let's see how far we can get :) You can vote daily too!

Oh and we are super excited that we just launched a Facebook page for the blog!! I don't have a button yet, so click here to like us.

Yay! I heart blogging :)


Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Please Don't Grow...



Danny happened to get two consecutive days off this week so we did what any Floridian would do and went to the beach! It's days like these that we are so grateful to have the beach as our backyard :) Before dinner we let the kids run around in a grassy area and I of course went picture happy.

They are so flippin' cute at this age and I am really trying to soak in every.single.moment. Sienna is already a little person and every day I'm amazed at what comes out of her mouth. Daniel is still a little baby and is quickly turning into a little man. Every day I squeeze him because I know it's the last day he will be that small...

Days like these make me want to have more babies (because I literally go back and forth every day of my life)...then we took them to a late dinner and had a double baby meltdown and had to take both of our dinners to go. I mean what were we really thinking letting them run around and wear themselves out before dinner?

Here are some special moments I captured...
 







Dont ask me what she's doing...^^

And but of course...how could we not try for the self timer shot?  I think we are starting to get the hang of it compared to this one
Love our life with les deux :)
Daniel: Shirt and shoes are from H&M//Shorts from Target
Sienna: Shirt from H&M//Salt Water Sandals//Skirt: Unknown-was a gift