Weekend Air Travel?

While traveling by air in Europe and America I've been a little frustrated. In Europe children under two years sit on your lap with a seat belt extender wrapped around your seatbelt and the baby's waist (or whatever else you can wrangle). In the US they don't offer you that option and instead you simply hold your baby in your lap or buy an extra full fare seat AND bring a car seat -either not safe or not affordable. 

Some clever person has invented this little vest, Baby B'air, has saved my friend a lot of grief. It is soft, foldable, washable and metal free. As you can see from the photo Little Ms. M doesn't mind the vest at all and it gives her mum a piece of mind -and who can deny it that when it comes to turbulence.

Here is a little video from the company:

P.S. Happy Birthday to Little Ms. M -the model!

N.B. For an older child I've used this with great success -beats taking along the car seat!

This stinks! Baby Changing Stations

In this day and age you would think that every public bathroom would have a baby changing station in both the mens' and womens' bathrooms -especially in AIRPORTS! Don't get me wrong, I love it and prefer it if there are family rooms but sometimes those are all taken (or not even offered).

Here is my BAD list of airports that don't offer equal rights in baby changing stations (not too surprisingly these are also nightmare airports because of the long lines and slow employees):
JFK Airport, NYC
Naples International Airport, Italy

Anyone else have one to add?

Yummy Playground Atlanta

For those of you who need a rest from juggling your little one on long haul flights in and out of Atlanta check out their international concourse -they have a toddler gym with mats! Great place to let off some steam for me and the little one. And catch up on emails too!

If you have a longer layover head out to the Atlanta Zoo it is really a very nice zoo with Pandas. For a super fun place to have a retro meets good old south food go to Agnes & Muriel's Restaurant. Try the sweet potato fries, sangria and gobs of other great food! Atlanta sure is a nice place for a wedding!
[Thanks to Mike & Laura -we had a great time!]

Airplane travel made easier

Who likes to carry a big awkward car seat on to an airplane? No one I know and that is why I am so happy that there is an alternative.
Here on European flights they give you a seat extender (the kind that bigger people get to attach to their seat belts) and expect you to attach it to your own and looped around baby. As you can imagine it isn't really a great option. So from America I ordered this great new seat belt from CARES (it is FAA approved too). It straps the baby in just as if it were a car seat belt and the set up time is less than one minute. There are both written instructions and a video. As you can see if folds up nice and small too -what a great invention!