Door way jumpers

I noticed today that I have a ridiculous amount of baby toys. Some of which my son has used only a handful of times. Mst of which I cannot ever bring with me when we travel somewhere due to there size. A huge problem when we go away is that I cannot use the stuff I normally do at home and that makes staying in a hotel for a week a bit unorganized. My son loves his swing and I use it multiple times a day and in a hotel room I really don't have anywhere to put him but his car seat. I was walking through walmart today and say a baby jumper that has a clamp that adheres to the molding above any door way. I was always nervous about jumpers like this because I thought they required drilling something into the door way and had a good chance of falling down. After carefully reading the instructions and manual to this jumper I decided to buy it and see how well it worked. All in all I love this jumper. It's incredibly safe and hold a max weight of 24 pounds. I don't know why I never found this before. This is an incredible idea for a hotel room. This will replace a swing and a bouncer. This product is small and can easily be folded down and packed into a suitcase. On our next trip I am Italy bringing this jumper. It will be somewhere for my son to hang out, literally, and play. He loves to bounce and swing back and forth. I would recommend this jumper to anyone and think it would be a great travel suggestion to anyone. This can be a safe place to keep you baby for a little while that's clean and not ouching anything in the hotel room. The brand I purchased was EvenFlo and it was a great price at 19.88 which is cheap for baby toys.

Valdosta Georgia

To be honest Valdosta Georgia is rather undeveloped and rural. Yet Georgia is known for its peaches I found one of the best barbeque restaurants I've ever eaten at. The name of the restaurant is the smokin pig BBQ. This place has a bigger parking lot that another building in Valdosta. This place was huge. We had great,fast customer service. The restaurant was very kid friendly. The booths are big enough to fit a car seat,myself and all my stuff. The food was delicious. Most dinner platter come with the salad bar and desert. The price was right and the BBQ was delicious. There was not much to do in Valdosta but eat or walk around. I took daily walks around my hotel with my son. I did not have any shopping centers or parks anywhere near my hotel. The closest place was a restaurant in front of our hotel. Everything required a car to get you from place to place. The weather in January was cool and cloudy. The one good thing about going to Valdosta is that is was about 20 miles from the border of Florida so it was a rather close drive home.

Great article for moms

http://ideas.typepad.com/brooding/2012/01/when-means-girls-become-mommies.html

Unwell wishers

There is always going to people in your life that never have anything nice to say or judge you by what you look like or choose to do with your life. In my short life I've met many of them but I have to say family members are almost always guilty of doing this. Becoming a parent is a big step in anyone's life but when there are people who openly say you are doing this wrong with raising your baby, how do you deal? No matter how far away you travel the burden of unhappy family members travels with you. Just remember at the end of the day the only opinion that really matters is your own. If there are people in your life that treat you nice to your face but behind closed doors say terrible things about you,cut off those unfriendly relationships. From personal experience I feel that people who are genuinely cruel cannot change there way of thinking so there is no point in perusing a friendship with those people. Maybe at another point in time your paths may cross again prompting better feelings but until then be strong and don't let other people bring you down. The reason that I am writing this off topic text is to let my readers know that I understand what it's like to be badly judged. I am here for anyone who needs to talk and express their unsettled feelings.

Traveling and television

One of the most annoying problems when you stay in hotels in different states has to be figuring out what channel on the TV is what. Most hotels don't have a guide button on the controller to display on the TV what you are actually watching. If your lucky your room may have a paper guide somewhere to tell you what's what. I love American idol, raising hope, the new girl and I hate my teenage daughter so all I need to do is find a fox network. Many times I get stuck on a fox political news channel thinking its going to eventually start playing shows but eight o'clock rolls around and no shows to be found. Then I'm left frustrated flipping through channels ona remote that obviously has been overused cause the buttons barely work. Another issue I run into a lot are time zone changes. Getting adjust to new time zones can be Spain. Especially for babies that are on a schedule and get frustrated when you change it up. With TV shows it can be just as irratating to figure out if your favorite show come on at the time you are used to, chances are the shows are not shown at the same time in a different time zone. Your best bet is to google the time zone to get a TV guide or go on the hotels website your staying at and normally they will have one on there for you to look at.

Washing clothes in a hotel

Chances are if you stay a week in a hotel with children you are probably going to have to wash clothes at some point. FYI most hotels have washing machines to use normally located by a fitness center or pool. However they will not provide you any detergent for cleaning. Most hotels will sell your small amount of spdetergent for a ridiculous price. Your best bet is to always bring a small bottle of detergent with you. Especially if you child has sensitive skin like mine, I have to use fragrance free and clear detergent. Normally hotels will not have this brand available for sale. Another option for people who fly to their destination is to just purchase a bottle upon arrival instead of having to pack and entire bottle of detergent. My baby spits up a lot on his bibs, clothes and blankets they cannot sit a full week in a bag without being washed. That's gross and smelly. If you want to use fabric softener in the dryers, the sheets are easier to pack and cheaper to purchase than liquid. Also another trick I use is that I either purchase empty travel size containers or keep the used bottles of hotel shampoo and reuse the bottles to put a small amount of detergent in them from home and pack the smaller bottles. Sometimes the bottles sold for purchase are still more than enough than you need in one weeks time and you shouldn't waste the rest of the unused bottle of detergent by throwing it away. Packing pre-filled bottles of detergent will give you just the right amount of use in one weeks time with out having to repackage or throw away a large detergent container.

San Diego Zoo

I was 6 months pregnant when my husband and I visited the San Diego zoo. It was march and the weather was perfect. That zoo is incredible. I dislike the idea of caging animals for the pleasure of humans but I wish every zoo would be modeled after this one. The environments the animals are kept in were so well created that it was impossible to tell one exhibit from the next. They flowed seamlessly from ne environment to the next. The animals were beautifully kept. All animals literally looked as if they were at home in the wild. It was absolutely beautiful. I underestimated the size of this zoo. The zoo provides bus rides around because it is so large. I wish we would have taken the bus! Pregnant and walking pretty much uphill both ways was crazy. I was out of breathe almost every other step. Luckily the park offers plenty of places to relax and sit. The food was ok, not amazing but ok. They have a sky ride over the entire zoo which was the tallest sky ride I have ever been on. It was so much fun. The admission price was high at 40 dollars a person but totally worth the money once you get inside and see the amazing job the care takers give to that zoo. I purchased a small stuffed animal giraffe for my son before he was born and he loves playing withit today. I have such beautiful memories about tha zoo and every time I see they son play with his toy giraffe I smile. I can't wait to take him there someday.