The good news: We have warm, dry beds and clothes to wear. I didn’t die in childbirth, and my baby has enough to eat.  

I’ve encountered one frustration after another in the final stages of preparing the print version Love At The Speed Of Email for publication. The latest stumbling block has been the cover.

My printer cannot seem to upload the beautiful cover that my talented designer Kimberly Glyder designed without mangling it. My printer also cannot seem to be bothered to provide accurate specs for the appropriate formatting or send anything other than an automated response to emails requesting support. I’m waiting to see if they can redeem themselves before I totally flame them, but so far I’ve been, shall we say, underwhelmed.

Kimberly, on the other hand, has been amazing. If you ever want a book cover designer you should totally hire her. (Well, except for the fact that she mostly works with publishing houses and I doubt this whole experience is making her think she should take on more individual clients. You could try though. I highly recommend you try.)

So to cut a long and very boring story short, the paperback version won’t be ready in time for my long-planned June 4^th release date. I’m hoping it’ll be ready for June 11^th. I’ll keep you posted.

After so many months of work and planning, this is disheartening.

However I’m also aware that it is what you might call a first world problem.

Women in this country have about a 1 in 40 chance of dying in childbirth. That’s the highest rate in the region and one of the highest in the world.

But it’s not only maternal health that’s a systemic problem in Laos; children’s health isn’t so great either. In many rural villages there’s not enough food to eat during the “hungry months” – that period when the rice is growing and before it’s harvested. This chronic food insecurity can lead to malnourishment, stunted growth and difficulties with mental development.  A few months ago, teams of Mike’s staff surveyed a number of villages across the province. About 30% of children in these villages had stunted growth. 

It’s frustrating to have to delay the book release slightly, but that’s all it is. Frustrating. There are so many bigger problems out there and I am so, so grateful to have to deal with so few of those on a daily basis.

May you all have a week that brings with it only first-world problems, and perhaps a taste of the exuberance pictured below. (Mike took this picture of the kids playing in a village last year. I love the look on her face – that total abandon to play. Maybe someday after this book comes out I’ll feel that way about writing again).

We got almost to the end of the dirt road outside our house before a familiar tawny shape gamboled past.

Zulu has taken to slipping out the gate whenever anyone goes in or out of our compound. Normally this isn’t a big problem – he darts around the neighborhood for a while, wild with excitement at the chance to play with other dogs, and then comes running home when they start to pick on him. He is not what you might call the world’s bravest dog.

When he gets out right after we’ve left, however, he doesn’t stay in the neighborhood. He follows us. When we scold him and order him home he puts his tail down and slinks back towards the house, but the minute we turn around to keep walking, so does our golden shadow.

On Tuesday he didn’t even pretend to obey us when we ordered him home. Instead he ran out into the middle of the paved street we were approaching – a road that (unlike the one that runs past our house) is actually trafficked by motorcycles and cars. In addition to not being the world’s bravest dog, Zulu is also not what you might call incredibly street smart.

We called and whistled to no avail. He pranced around near us while motorcycles weaved around him, but never near enough for us to grab him.

“Let him go,” Mike finally said with the fatalistic weariness of the very jet lagged. “If he dies on the road, he dies.”

“If he dies on the road,” I said with the desperate pragmatism of a stay at home mother, “I lose my best baby toy.”

Zulu followed us another forty meters up the road and into the courtyard of Dr Payang’s clinic, where Mike grabbed him and hauled him home and I settled down to wait my turn.

Going to the doctor here is a little different than going to a doctor at home. There is no such thing as an appointment. The clinic opens when the doctor comes home from her work at the hospital at about 5:30, and she sees patients on a first come first served basis.

When you arrive at the clinic you take off your shoes and pick up a number outside the door. Then you wait your turn on a bench in the front of the room while Dr Payang sees people in the back of the room where she has set up a desk, a chair and a camp bed. The waiting area and the consultation area are only separated by a large dresser that acts as a partial screen.

When it was my turn, Dr Payang looked puzzled and declared that I did not have an ear infection.

“I think maybe an infection here,” she said, drawing me a diagram and marking a spot underneath my ears. “I don’t know how to say in English. I only know in French, Thai, or Lao.”

She wrote something down in French on a scrap of cardboard and showed it to me. My rudimentary French wasn’t nearly up to the task of translating it, so I tried to guess what it might be.

“Strep throat?” I offered.

“No,” she said.

“Sinus infection?”

“No,” she said. “I call colleague who know how to say it.”

She picked up her mobile phone and dialed a friend. Then she wrote down the word mumps.

“I have the mumps?” I asked when she got off the phone. “But I’ve been vaccinated.”

“Same but different,” she said. “Infection in the parotide gland. Same as mumps but not as bad.”

So I’m on antibiotics for the fourth time in three months. This time for a case of “sort-of-mumps.” Except, after having consulted Dr Google I don’t think Dr Payang’s got this one quite right. My money’s on an inner or middle ear infection. Again. And if it doesn’t resolve soon it’ll probably mean a trip to Thailand. Again.

Needless to say, I’m not incredibly eager to get on a plane with severe ear pain so I’m sending good vibes to all the amoxicillin I’m pumping into my system to fight the good fight. [Insert Notre Dame fight song, cheers, whistles, catcalls, victory chants and all other forms of encouragement here.]

I know many of you travel or live in unusual places. What interesting medical dramas have you had while overseas?

"That dog has no idea what's about to hit him now that I'm crawling"

Mike hopped on his bicycle and went to do things like order yogurt and bread and buy fruit.

There was no way I was braving the furnace that was upstairs to start unpacking suitcases, so I sat on the tile floor and watched sweaty snotty baby pull toys out of a basket while I tried to piece the alphabet foam mat that I’d disassembled before we left for the sake of our house-sitters (the whole rainbow foam-alphabet is growing on me, but I do realize it’s not everyone’s favorite look).

I was doing pretty well until I got to W. Then I was momentarily stuck.

I knew I needed an X, but I couldn’t find it. As it turned out, I’d already used the X, right after R.

Q R X T U V

Yes. I was so tired from four days of not getting more than two hours of sleep in a row that I got the alphabet wrong.

I’ve done some silly things tired, but I think that takes the spacey cake.

In other news, we spent most of Saturday at Bumrungrad hospital in Bangkok, bouncing between doctors appointments. Good news from Dominic’s first follow up for his leg. The healing (or “remodeling” as they called it) is going well. The end of the femur has started to straighten out and the break sites are less visible. The doctors had no concerns at this stage.

What’s the funniest thing you’ve done when you were tired?

The rules of this game are simple. You go around the table one by one and say something that starts with “I like”. Oh, and you can’t qualify it. None of this, “I like snowflakes but I really hate like how it gets so cold in winter that my teeth hurt.” No. No buts, just simple statements about things you like, one after the other in a chain of positive declaration.

It’s a really cool game.

(Also, once or twice Mike and I have gone to one of the few wine bars in Luang Prabang and ordered ourselves a glass of cheap Chilean wine – wine whose long journey across the Pacific has done nothing to improve its flavour – and played “I don’t like”. Same rules, just backwards. In occasional, time-limited moderation this is oddly cathartic.)

But back to the positive version of this game. Listening to others voice their like statements without being able to push pause and ask them questions (another rule, no “why” questions while you’re playing) was fascinating. I learned things about my friends that night, as all those simple statements pointing to the beautiful in life swirled around the table in a rising tide of affirmation.

We’re in the final stages of our home leave trip to the US now. Two more days and we’ll be heading back to the airport.

(I don’t like airports! I don’t like flying! I especially don’t like airports and flying with babies!)

Sorry, just had to get that out. Now I can move on to the point of this post. The likes. There have been many things to like during this trip. Here are just a few.

Cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. Ice cream. Laughing with a sister. Chick Fil’A. Rocking chairs. Green grass and blue skies. Baby smiles and baby laughs. Crisp breezes. Shady forest paths. Sweet potato fries. Free shipping from Amazon. Slow flowing rivers. Reunions. Wine from New Zealand. Crawling babies. Five weeks of team parenting. Peanut butter cups. Quiet cabins in the woods. Day trips. Meals with friends. Cheap children’s books. Sweet time with precious author friends. Writing conferences. Barbeque sauce. Books going to print. Fires on cold nights. Babies with chocolate ice cream on their faces.

We leave here on Thursday and we arrive back in Laos on Sunday after spending a day at our favorite hospital in Bangkok for Dominic’s first follow-up appointment. So I’ll be back with you from Laos next week and you’ll soon be hearing a lot more from me as things kick into gear for the book release on June 4^th.

I’m organizing a virtual book tour from Laos, so let me know if you’d like me to visit your blog during June or July to guest post or do a Q&A – I’d love to.

What are some of your “I likes” from the last month?

Seriously.

I’ve sat down a dozen times this last week to start one and I always get interrupted before I’ve written four lines.

(Mike might say that this is because the pace I write at approximates the flow of molasses during a blizzard. Then again he might not say that, because if he did I would glare at him.)

Anyway.

What have I been doing other than making time to write blog posts?

Well.

1. Spending time with family doing things like shopping for two years worth of baby clothes and wine tasting. (They have wineries in Virginia, who knew?).

2. Preventing Dominic from eating seeds from a cardboard box he found and ripped open. (At least, I think I caught him before he ate any.)

3. Helping my sister sift and sort her shoes, and simultaneously preventing Dominic from chewing on the bottom of a pair of dirty flip-flops. (Some might say that the fact that I distracted Dominic by alternatively dangling him upside down and allowing him to chew on the shoelace of a nearby pair of sneakers makes me a bad mother. In response to that I would smile serenely and declare that, no, I am a good mother.)

4. And in defense of my good mothering I would point to the fact that I’ve been getting up between three and six times a night to comfort and/or feed a fussing baby who has a nasty habit of losing his pacifier and then lying around whining until his servants scamper to return it to him. (And do not even think about mentioning sleep training to me right now. You try to sleep train a baby when you’re a guest in other people’s houses for five weeks and you’re moving locations every four days or so.)

5. Yes, I may also have been getting a touch irritable because of lack of sleep.

6. Rerouting away from irritability to … ice cream!! We fed Dominic his first ice cream on our trip up to Pennsylvania last week and it was a huge hit.

7. Speaking of ice cream I haven’t done my official end-of-trip weigh in yet, but I can confidently report that I’m making good progress on my stated goal of gaining ten pounds during this holiday. (I do not think we can ever live in America again. I’m not sure I can be trusted in the land of Ben & Jerry’s, ribs, sweet potato fries, brie, good wine, Chick Fil’A and standard restaurant servings deliver 5634 calories).

8. Speaking of calories, when we were up in Pennsylvania we visited Hershey’s Chocolate World where one of the things we did was get all dressed up as if we were touring operating theatres and create our own chocolate bar. (I had mine stamped with my own name. Mike being Mike, he put Dominic’s name on his so that we can give it to him for his first birthday. Let’s hope Dominic doesn’t turn out to be allergic to chocolate.)

9. If he is allergic to chocolate, however, I now know what to do about it thanks to this morning doctor’s visit where the pediatrician prescribed me two EpiPens to take home and walked me through what to do in case of a severe allergic reaction.

10. And last but not least I’ve been spending any spare time doing things like proofing the back cover design for Love At The Speed Of Email, starting to draft guest posts, and getting some other publicity balls rolling. Less than a month until the books now! I’m so excited to share more details with you over the next couple of weeks.

That’s all from me for now, so over to you. What have you been doing with yourself or your family lately?

Although, come to think of it, I guess it depends on how you define stuff. If you define stuff as spending time with family and friends, eating ice cream and brie, and shopping for essentials like children’s books, baby toothbrushes, bed sheets, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, then I’ve been getting lots of stuff done.

(After only having cheap Chilean wine available in Laos, this is how we feel when we’re getting stuff done in the liquor store:)

(This is how we feel when we’re getting stuff done in the supermarket. I mean, seriously, does any civilization really need 547 different brands of toilet paper?)

If you tend to define stuff more narrowly as professional activities otherwise known as work then I’ve been getting less stuff done. Although, now that I say that, I must admit that this blog post is being written on a day when I’ve already checked the final formatted files for the print version of Love At The Speed Of Email, sent off the spine size for the cover, finalized the contract with my agency for the e-book, and spent time research the pros and cons of Createspace and Lightening Source as printers.

Thanks, Mike, for putting aside your own stuff to play with our baby a lot this last couple of days.

Speaking of our baby, he’s crawling. It’s outrageously cute. And his preferred method of letting me know he’s done feeding at the moment is biting me. That’s a lot less cute. Also, he’s lobbying hard to be officially recognized as World’s Worst Sleeper (Class 0-1). I don’t want to brag, but I think he has a really good chance at the title.

I know Mike and I have recently gone to special lengths to set him up to excel in this area – what, with the dragging him halfway around the world and putting him in a new bed every couple of nights and mummy (and the boob) disappearing for three whole days – but we can’t claim all the credit, I don’t think. He’s invested a great deal of time and energy in cultivating shocking sleeping patterns, and we’re so proud of his consistent dedication to excellence.

We’re also exhausted. This morning at 5am after I’d already fed him three times throughout the night and been up with him several other times beside, I lay there and quoted Adam Mansbach at him until Mike took pity on me and carted him away.

I hope you’re all having a good weekend, getting lots of stuff done, and maybe even spending some time in green places. Love from the US …

It all started before we moved house in Laos, when my parents spent some of their visit packing boxes and helping me sort clothes. Then, the week before the move, half a dozen friends showed up to help us pack. They wrapped up pictures, moved books, boxed up our entire kitchen, and even bought a toaster-oven-sized pasta casserole in a handy disposable foil container (the kind we wash out and keep because they’re not that easy to come by).

The day before the move, one friend came by to take Dominic for a walk while I met with another friend who helped me polish off this new website.

On Saturday the same crew showed up with some of their Lao friends for the actual move. When it became apparent that we were still short-staffed, one of these Lao friends (who we’d met only once before) rang some of her Lao friends and told them to join the kindness party. They did.

On Sunday someone came by to help us unpack boxes.

On Monday and Tuesday, only days before we were scheduled to leave for the States, Lao-speaking friends picked Dominic and me up and drove us to the local hospital where I got to experience what it’s like to have someone stick long, sharp steel instruments in your ears when you can’t understand a word they’re saying except “Wow!” Apparently the severity of my recent ear infections was quite impressive.

The kindness hasn’t stopped coming on this side of the Pacific. A massage therapist friend donated some time and expertise to help us recover from the long trip, and then even threw in dinner and wine afterwards. My sister organized a bunch of baby gear for us before our arrival and bought us a pre-paid phone to use. Mike’s parents had stocked up on clothes, toys and food for Dominic, and they’ve lent us a car to use while we’re here. This past weekend there was that angel in disguise as a United Airlines employee who went out of her way (and against policy) to help me get back to DC from Michigan after I messed up my flight bookings, and right now I’m sitting in a cabin in the West Virginian woods that another friend has opened to us for a couple of days.

So much kindness coming our way during a season when life has felt so jam-packed and overwhelming.

I’m hugely appreciative of everything friends, family, and strangers have done to help us lately, but I must admit that I don’t always feel comfortable being on the receiving end of such kindness, of being in the position of needing to accept help. Sometimes, perhaps often, I end up feeling weak and indebted in these sorts of situations – as if I’ve failed at something that I should have been able to manage on my own.

This past couple of weeks I couldn’t have managed all on my own, though. Not well, anyway. And it’s forced me to remember that while learning to manage on your own might be the main point of transitioning from childhood to adulthood, it’s not the main point of the bigger picture of life itself. To live life well, to be most happy, we must live in communion with others. And central to the ideal of community is give and take – a rhythmic, tidal ebb and flow of kindness.

I am sure that I’ll soon have the opportunity to be on the giving end of the practical kindness equation again soon (like, tonight, at 11PM when someone wakes me up just after I’ve finally gotten to sleep). In the meantime I’m going to sit here on this sunny Wednesday amidst the burgeoning green peace of this borrowed cabin and be a grateful grateful grateful recipient.

When has someone lavished kindness upon you recently?

All that flustered worry, wasted, when what I should have been worrying about was the fact that I’d booked my return flights to Washington DC for Sunday April 29^th instead of Sunday April 22^nd. I didn’t worry about this in advance at all, however, because I didn’t know this until I tried to check in at 5AM and they couldn’t find a record of my flight reservation.

Isn’t that just the worst feeling when they take your ID at the airport and type in your name and then look puzzled? Yeah, I’ve had that particular feeling way too many times in my life.

I apologized profusely and admitted that this debacle was completely my fault. Then brown-haired angel at check in accomplished what I had not even dared hope for and rebooked me for this morning without charging me anything (and even though she was not supposed to do that unless there were seats still available in my fare class, which there weren’t). I told her when we parted company that I hoped she had as good a day as she had just granted me. May she receive a shinning emerald of kindness in her heavenly crown.

Well, I didn’t tell her that bit about the heavenly crown ‘cuz that would probably have sounded weird.

Neither did I tell her that my breasts thanked her, ‘cuz that would have sounded even weirder. But let me tell you (in case you happen to be wondering what my breasts have to do with anything) that you cannot abandon your baby for three days while breastfeeding without suffering repercussions. Yes, even if you pump.

Speaking of my baby, Mike and I have hardly had two minutes to talk since I left but he did briefly express some awe at the strength of will our child has demonstrated this past couple of days. Apparently there have been gargantuan battles to get him to eat, drink, and go to anyone other than Mike. Everyone at Festival said how happy little D will be to see me return but, actually, my best guess is that he’ll still just be pissed at me for leaving and that this temper tantrum will not end in the arrival halls of Dulles. I just hope His Royal Babyness condescends to feed. I really need him to feed.

So given the unhappy baby, the sleep-deprived daddy, the having to rush off and find a private electrical outlet a couple of times a day to pump, and my own extreme sense of dislocation that first day when I found myself walking around without Dominic literally attached to my hip, was coming to this conference worth it?

I don’t know, to be honest.

It was wonderful, to be sure. I spent sweet, sweet time with my great friend Nicole Baart and others. I made new friends (looking at you Mary DeMuth and Bethany Pierce). I was moved and challenged by some wonderful speakers. I slept for almost eight uninterrupted hours for the first time in more than a year and a half!!!! And once I got over the shock of separation that first day I mostly luxuriated in the baby-free time.

How do you put a price on all of that? How do you weigh that up against the hardship to Mike and Dominic that my absence represented?    

I don’t know. I do know that I’m glad I went. But I’m also so excited (not to mention relieved) that I’m now about to get on a flight leaving Chicago for Washington DC and returning to my boys. I can’t wait to see their tired faces. And even if Dominic is Baby Scowly instead of Baby Smiley I can’t wait to grab his chunky little body and kiss him all over.

Then it would be really nice to get a long, uninterrupted afternoon nap. What do you think my chances are?    

Ugh. I had no idea how hard that would really be. I’ve accosted two perfect strangers in the hallways here already just so I could pet their babies.

“It’s only three nights,” I keep telling myself. “This is good for him. It’s good for me.”

Well, it’s undoubtedly good for me, but I’m not so sure about him. When I rang to check in last night I could hear him screaming in the background and pretty much all I got from Mike was; “He’s refusing to eat or drink anything. Gotta go.”

I have been assured, however, that he will eat or drink something when he gets desperate enough, and that I should try to enjoy being here and focus on my “other baby” for a while.

Speaking of my other baby … You may have seen by now, but Love At The Speed Of Email has a cover!

This is a magical moment in the book publishing journey.

When I’m writing a book, the closest I get to color is the pink and green post-it notes laid out in neat arcs across the surface of my desk – a neon visual of my plot-line. But the day after day work of actually writing the thing is in marching (often, frog-marching) black type across a white page and the Technicolor magic hidden in those words exists only in your mind, until …

One day someone whose gifts are different than yours takes your black and white baby and dresses it in colour. Seeing the cover for a book you’ve worked on for years is like seeing a good friend – the friend who watches old movies with you on a Friday night when you’re both in your PJs – walk into the room wearing stilettos and mascara and dressed for a night of dancing and champagne cocktails.

Of course, this old friend of yours is going out alone because you’re still on the couch in your PJs and eating popcorn for dinner, but never mind that. They look fantastic, and seeing them all fancied up makes you look at them through fresh eyes.

I had four very different types of cover to choose from for the book, and I love the one I finally settled upon. Now, more than ever, I’m excited to see Love At The Speed Of Email launch in June. And I’ll write more about this down the track, but if you have a blog and you’d like to do a question and answer with me about the book, life in Laos, or whatever sometime this summer I’d love to hear from you!

In the meantime, tell me, do you think you can know a book by its cover? How do you choose the books you read, and what are some of your favorite covers?

Of course, both Mike’s and my sleep patterns are so shot now that when we wake up at 3AM after five uninterrupted hours of sleep, our bodies assume that we’ve gotten our week’s allotment and that we should be getting up and moving on with the day.

It’s awesome.

Shortly after we arrived, I joked with The Traveling Writer that I should guest post for her on this topic of traveling overseas with babies. I said the post would read, in full:

Don’t. Just don’t.

But I know that some of us don’t have the luxury of swearing off long-haul travel just because we’re carrying a twenty-pound black hole of entertainment-need as our hand luggage – not unless we also want to swear off our careers. Or our marriages.

So. For those of us for whom travel is part of life, here are some things I’ve recently learned about traveling with babies (and I do realize that babies come in both boy and girl brands, but mine’s a boy so all babies shall hereinafter be referred to as boys):

1. Carry a U-shaped pillow with you. Yes, it’s bulky. But it’s light, and your arms and back will thank you when you don’t have to support baby weight for hours on end. These pillows can help support the baby in your lap, barricade them safely in their own seat, and you can use it when the baby’s asleep in the bassinet.

2. Bring a partner to lift bags.  Or if you have to endure the torture of traveling alone, don’t be the least bit shy about asking for help from flight attendants.

3. Move heaven and earth to ensure you’re seated at the bassinet. It makes a huge difference to be able to put the baby down when he’s asleep. The bassinet also makes a convenient change table (though make sure you line it with a blanket, first) and even a temporary seat.

4. If possible, have a designated seat for the baby. This is especially important if he’s older than six months old. If you can, take his car seat (and this is particularly important if you don’t have a bassinet). Confirm in advance with the airline, however, that the airline’s economy seat can accommodate your car seat. A lot of economy seats are narrower than baby pods.

5. Pack pajamas and any toys your baby sleeps with in your hand luggage. Logic (although, I have to say, not recent experience) suggests that it’ll help him sleep better if you adhere to his normal bedtime routine as closely as possible.

6. Pack a light blanket or linen wrap to lie over the top of the bassinet to shield him from ambient light (flickering TV screens, etc).

7. If you’re breastfeeding, make sure you drink lots of water during the flight. Drink even more than you think you need.

8. A word about medication: If you’re interested in using medication to help your baby sleep, talk to your doctor. Two options you might want to discuss are Phenergan and Benadryl. One thing I will say, however, is that you should test any medication you plan on using before you use it on a plane. Phenergan, for example, can make some children hyperactive instead of sleepy.

9. Try to sleep yourself whenever the baby sleeps.

10. If he’s eating, pack along plenty of munchie food (more than you think he could want). Food he has to pick up and eat himself is especially useful as a distraction.

11. Pack along disposable bibs and diapers.

12. Do not pack along very noisy toys (loud rattles, toys that make electronic beeps or animal sounds, etc). Those sorts of toys are a bit of a public-space foul. If your baby absolutely needs animal sounds, make your own. Use what’s on the plane as new toys, too. Let him hold and scrunch little unopened bags of peanuts and paw at the laminated sheet of safety instructions (no one reads those things anyway, they may as well be put to some good use).

13. Pack along at least two extra changes of clothing for the baby. Don’t forget socks.

14. Pack along an extra change of clothes for you because, as Mike can tell you, you really don’t want to get vomited on in the departure lounge in Laos with 35 hours of travel still in front of you and no extra shirt to change into.

15. Pack along a spare sippy cup or bottle – you may not be able to rinse them out if they get dirty.

16. If he’s using pacifiers, take along spares as well as a clip on chain to fasten them to the baby’s clothing. Pack them into small Ziploc bags so that you can differentiate between clean and dirty later in the flight.

17. During layovers, help the baby burn energy if he is awake. Let him move and stand and crawl.

18. Nurse or bottle-feed him during take off and landing and/or encourage him to suck on a pacifier. Little ears are even more sensitive to changes in cabin pressure than adult ears. During landing, ear pressure issues can kick in earlier for children than adults, so be aware that your baby may be experiencing ear pain and popping before you are even aware that you’re descending.

19. If you’re self-conscious about nursing in public, take that into account when you select your own travel clothes and/or pack along a nursing shield to drape over the baby while he’s feeding.

20. And, finally, never leave your child unattended in an airport cart, even if you’re so tired that you are seeing double and you just found the comfy chairs that recline.

OK traveling parents, share your wisdom. What have you learned about traveling with babies and toddlers?