We arrived home yesterday, late afternoon, after a long day of travel.
Our trip probably totaled 10 hours.
And the girls had to be sitting down for about 8 of those hours.
Thankfully, Maia is just getting to the age where occupying her mind is getting easier and easier.
Ruby still needs physical distractions for the most part.
I thought I'd share some of the things we brought with us to keep the girls entertained.
We picked up these books from Target. There are Baby Einstein and princess editions, but these are Mickey Mouse themed.
The books are 4 "pages" long with one sentence a page, so they are easy to read.
Not only do both Maia and Ruby like hearing the stories, but Ruby really enjoys pulling the books out and figuring out how they fit back in.
Also, after they hear the books a couple of times, they like to read them on their own.
My mom sent these to the girls as Christmas presents.
They especially loved the silly faces one and came back to play with them after all the new Christmas toys had been opened.
We picked up this wonderful toy at the Portland Children's Museum.
It is the PERFECT toy for Maia.
It's a magnetic board with different sheets that can slid in and out. The sheets are double sided and contain different pictures made out of shapes.
The shapes are wooden and have a magnetic backing.
The only issue is that precarious time when your 3 year old is pulling the the wooden blocks from the bag and placing them on the magnetic board.
However, I don't think we left any pieces on the plane.
Maia loved it so much that she asked to do "projects" during our layover.
And of course, it's Melissa and Doug. God bless them.
We try to limit screen time with our kids, but long travel days call for all kinds of resources. So in addition to books (thin ones that don't take up a lot of room; this time it was mostly Pinkalicious and Berenstain Bears) we also downloaded some of the kids' favorite tv show onto our iPads.
When I was little we were allowed a 1/2 hour of tv a day and it was usually Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Sometimes we got to watch half of Sesame Street if we were lucky!
Anyway, PBS has just put out a revamped version of Mister Rogers' Neighboorhood, but it is animated and called Daniel Tiger. There are the same opening and closing songs and philosophical and educational approach to the show.
Maia adores it and oftentimes I will hear her sing to Ruby "grownups come back" when I go running or "find a way to play together" when Ruby won't share.
And, of course, the girls' favorite puppet "Handy" (cousin to "Barfy") made a few appearances on the airplane.
(Barf bag puppet. Just be sure the bag is clean before sticking in your hand.)
Honestly, the actual traveling part of traveling is getting so much easier.
Now once our girls figure out how to be sweet, kind, non-screaming kids when they are tired, we'll be unstoppable!
Well, maybe not, but just happier and better rested.
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