Home Made Jake and The Neverland Pirates Toys

Will I ever write on this blog consistently? Probably not. But this time I have a good excuse for my long absence...or a cute excuse at the very least. This little sweetheart decided she needed to join us 8 1/2 weeks early so we've been busy running back and forth from our house to the hospital and there and back again. She's home now though and doing fantastic. Can you tell that we are Disney addicts at our house? Well it's true, we have a problem. Anyway, Disney has a new show, Jake and the Neverland Pirates. May is crazy about it. She loves to pretend she's a pirate and that she has pixie dust and can fly. It's so new though that they don't have anything out for it yet (or else you can be sure we'd have at least a Jake coloring book to drag around). So for her Easter basket I thought I would make her some Jake toys.
This is not the greatest picture but there was about to be a mutiny if I didn't return that pixie dust pouch to its rightful owner. So the foam sword laying in the back is from the dollar store. There were no questions asked that it was Jake's sword.

For the Izzy doll I used the Black Apple Doll pattern found here on Martha Stewart's website. I used the leg piece of the pattern as a guide for the boots and just made them wider and shorter than the leg. Sew them and then fold the tops down. The bandanna (and that pink think on the left is a matching bandanna for May) are just triangles cut from fabric with a zig zag stitch around them.
The pixie dust pouches are pretty simple. I used felt so I didn't have to worry about fraying but you could probably use whatever you want. Cut a circleish shape from your material. It doesn't have to be perfect because you are just going to bunch it up anyway. Run thread up and down (by hand) using long stitches around the entire circle. Make sure you start and end on the outside of your pouch. Pull it tight. Take a piece of ribbon and stitch the ends onto opposite sides of the pouch to make your necklace. I filled May's with glitter knowing full well it would be a huge mess. Yes I've been finding glitter everywhere but it's not as bad as I thought and totally worth how excited she gets when she sprinkles it on something.
The map is also incredibly simple. I bought iron-on transfer paper. Printed the map on it and ironed it onto some brown material. I did a zig zag stitch around it hopefully to keep it from fraying too bad but you could skip that part if you wanted might make more authentic looking if it was frayed.

So..YO HO Let's go!

The Art Wall

We've just moved to a house where we can have a just play area. It has been oh so heavenly. I wanted something on the walls to put up May's artwork. So I made these. Super easy.

Materials:

Clothespins (You can find a big pack at the dollar store)

A piece of wood the length and width of your choosing

Hanging wire

Hot glue or screws

Paint

Take the clothes pins apart and paint them and your wood. Once the clothes pins are dry put them back together.

My wood is balsa from Micheal's so it's super thin so I just hot glued my clothes pins on alternating facing up and down. If you want something sturdier you may want to screw your clothes pins into some actual wood.

Attach hanging wire on the back-mine are held up by a hanging wire on each side. Again hot glue worked for mine because the board was so light but you may need to attach it better if your board is heavier.

St. Patrick's Day

My sincerest apologies that this post is going to be super lamely put together but at least it's here right??? right???

We had a leprechaun leave a note for us this morning...here it is...sideways...and in picture form instead of document form...because those leprechauns are tricky like that. That first little picture in the letter is a picture of May, that yellow blur is a pile of gold coins. The top picture is a green egg (Yes, I may have paid the leprechaun off to make eating breakfast one of the requirements before finding his gold coins). The picture at the end of decorate it with is green glitter. The top picture is a pot of gold followed by May's picture again. The leprechaun left the note with a St. Patrick's day crown for May, green hair for me, and a nice big green hat for May's dad. All of which I'm pretty sure the leprechaun got from the dollar bins at target.

So after eating breakfast, May went upstairs to pick out a green shirt. Oh funny. She pulled out her pink Minnie Mouse shirt and was trying to convince her teddy bear it was green (I don't think he believed her). So we went through her shirts and I asked her if a few were green and she would say , "No that's (insert color here)." In her sweet little "duh mom" voice. So then she put a green shirt on once we got to it.

For the puzzle I just google imaged a 4 leaf clover and printed it. Before I cut it up I traced the shape on another piece of paper so she could see how it was fit together. She put it together the first time but wasn't about to do it again when I asked her to glue it on so I guess I should've had her put glue on the pieces before she put them on. Then she decorated it with glitter.
Cookies were oh so fun and oh so messy. (Side note: Yes I know she has on a green and pink shirt with a purple headband and a red and blue flower, May picked the hair pieces herself and the girl knows what she wants).

I knew I wasn't going to have the energy to make cookie dough so I just bought some premade stuff from the store...never again...although May didn't seem to mind. I cooked a batch ahead of time so they were ready to be frosted at the same time. I skipped the cookie cutters this time and we just made flat shapes and put them on. I think this was actually better. May said she was making, a train, a pirate, and a kite which we have none of those cookie cutters so it would've been a shame to miss out on that.

I bought a can of premade frosting and we divided it up into 6 zip lock bags. I put the food coloring in zipped it up (make sure most of the air is out) and then May mashed it up to get the frosting to turn colors. I clipped the corners off so she could squeeze it out. I thought this might be easier but we resorted to getting out a plastic knife and spreading the frosting anyway. Then we decorated...or mostly ate with a little decorating kind of thrown in there.

After we cleaned up our cookie mess the check list was complete and gold coins started appearing all around the house! That leprechaun (aka grandma being super and picking some up for me at Harman's because I couldn't find any at wal-mart) bought some chocolate coins in gold foil. They come in a net bag and they might be just an Easter time thing but I'm not positive.

Here is May counting her spoils. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Valentines Day

I know I know, Valentines day was a month ago. Moving and pregnancy have taken their toll and this blog is the first thing that's gotta give. But here are some fun things we did for valentines day. Most of it could be used any ol' time just don't make it valentines stuff.



Starting from the 1st until valentines day we had little mail boxes. I had May color some little cards to put in her dads. I put princess valentines, suckers, and a few dollar store toys in hers. She loved it-she was so excited to open her mail box every morning and she felt so special putting stuff in her dads. It was fun. We made some heart flowers. I let May choose a paper from my scrap book pile. Then I cut out about 10 hearts from it and punched a hole in the middle of them. She put them on the straw. Bendy straws work the best because it stops the hearts from sliding all the way down. Then she did the vase. I measured the paper before and then she taped it onto a juice can. This picture does not do the random tape strips everywhere justice. I think she had more fun taping than doing anything else. Then she decorated it with stickers.

I found this cute valentine heart sorting mat here at prekinders.com. May sorted out the hearts in colors. We got some of them counted...but most ended up in her tummy before the counting began so there ya go. I've seen a mat like this that was just different color O shapes to be used for fruit loops but I haven't really looked for it.

The letter S

We've been going to a preschool rotation thing once a week. Each week they focus on a letter and this week it was our turn so here is what I did.

First I read the "S the snake" story from our flip book here.

Then I used these flannel board cut outs from DLTK to tell the story of Stone Soup. I laminated the food and passed them out to the kids then when we came to the food that they had I would have them put it in a pot. It worked really well.

For our activity thing we made these snakes. I cut out the tongues and the ovals ahead of time. I wrote and S on most of the ovals but then I put a few different letters on some of them. Then I laid them out on a cookie sheet and the kids had to find ovals that had S' on them to make their snake out of and then they glued them on the paper.
For our snack I made bread stick snails. You can find the recipe here at parents.com. It's very simple. I forgot pesto though so I just brushed them with butter and rosemary.

A Minnie Mouse Party!

We had a Minnie Mouse party for May on Saturday though and I thought it turned out pretty good. I got a lot of my ideas from At Second Street but I changed a lot of them because she is way more creative and talented than I am.



Here is her cute Minnie outfit. She is wearing this for Halloween too. I made the skirt (the tutorial is in the link At Second Street) and the headband and then just bought her a pink shirt. And of course she is wearing her sparkly pink shoes-can't leave home without them





Here are the invitations. The inside was basically the beginning lines to Mickey Mouse Clubhousebut we changed it to come to my party and "Maylie Mouse" instead of Mickey Mouse. If I had a bigger budget I would've got pink M&Ms but regular ones just had to do.




I made the cake. For Minnie's face I used a 10" round and her ears are 2 6" inch rounds. I used 2 cans of chocolate, a can of vanilla, and a can of cherry frosting. I sized a picture of Minnie so that her face was 10" then I cut out the black parts of the picture. I would post where I found the picture but I'm not sure if it's copy righted or not. I just googled Minnie Mouse though and it came up. I frosted the 10" with white and then laid the picture on the top and filled in the detail areas. The ears are just frosted with chocolate and then the pink cake is just another 6" to add some color and some cake. We had about 25 people and we only had a few pieces left over so it worked out well.

I made a fabric banner. I cannot find the original tutorial I used for the life of me but here is another one that looks great.

Aren't the poofs adorable? So easy and pretty cheap. They are just made out of tissue paper and I love love love them. The tutorial is At Second Street but she takes you to the Martha Stewart website.

This is our pinata. The kids were such good sports about going in the rain to hit it. We don't have any pictures because cameras don't mix well with rain. We made the kids wear Mickey Mouse gloves ( you know the big squishy ones you get from Disneyland) so that it was hard to grasp the bat. I made the older kids wear a blind fold too. Funny story. Morning of the party and I'm looking everywhere for the table clothes I bought and suddenly I realize that I probably glued them into the pinata. Way to go. Everyone was a little confused about them when they came out.

Zach shaped the pinata but I think he did the hard way. Check out At Second Street for the easy way. She also tells you how to decorate it this easy peasy way with crepe paper. The bow I sewed from material leftover from May's outfit.

We gave everyone a "toodles" bag that had mouskatools in them that we used throughout the party. For example-stickers and markers to decorate hats, blindfolds and tape for pin the bow on Minnie, candles for the cake etc. When we needed a mouskatool we'd call for toodles! This will probably make no sense to you unless you've seen Mickey Mouse Clubhouse so go watch it and realize what cute idea it was. :)

Here is everyone in their mouse ears hats. I found plain hats at the dollar store as well as a pack of foam. I drew the circles on the foam and then had them decorate their hat and cut their ears out. Then they brought them to me to hot glue the ears on the side. I love our family. Everyone decorated and wore a hat. What good sports.

We played pin the bow on Minnie. I used the same picture of Minnie for this as I did for the cake and then cut out bows from pink paper. This is May's 94 year old great great grandma pinning the bow on Minnie. What a sweetheart huh.

We went pretty simple for food. We bought Mickey Mouse Chicken nuggets from Costco and then just got some fruit and veggies with dip for both. It turned out great we had fun!

What's Your Name?

I would love for May to be able to respond to the question of, "What's your name?" Partly because I hate when people ask her and wait for her to answer-they look like fools (yes I said fools!!). And partly because if she ever got lost it might be nice if she knew her name (our names our next on the list followed by our phone number).

So we played a game with her stuffed animals. We set up all the ones that she has a definite name for, like Minnie Mouse, Snow White, Lemur, Puppy, Baby, etc. up at different places on the couch. Then I would walk up to them and ask them their name. Then make them respond. May caught on quickly and would ask "syur name" funny. Then I would ask her, "What's your name?" and if she didn't answer I would say, "May May!" I think she knows the answer now but she doesn't always say it so we'll have to keep practicing.

E is for...

E is for egg...

We did an egg hunt for these puzzle eggs. We found the pieces throughout the house and then put them together at her table.
We did this egg shell craft. I've been dreading doing this but it actually was really great. This was the first time May has actually understood that glue makes things stick if you leave them there long enough. I just rinsed out some egg shells and then dyed them with food coloring. May mixed them up in the bag and glued them on the E paper.
E is for elephant...

We did some stuff from Confessions of a Home schooler although not very vigilantly. We also did just some regular coloring pages that we had in our coloring book that had elephants on it.

Our flip book animal was an elephant. May had a really hard time making the "eh" sound and she didn't really recognize it when we came back to it later so we'll have to revisit this one soon.

E is for envelope...

I have some bright colored envelopes that I put the numbers 1-10 in and put them around the house. I taped different numbers and envelopes up on the wall. When may found the envelope then she would take the number inside and match it to the number on the wall and then match the envelope to the other one on the wall.

Z is for...

It was hard to think of things to do for the letter Z! Here are the few things that we did.

We made a Zebra puppet found here.

We played Zebra dominoes and did some coloring pages from Confessions of a Home schooler found here. She has a cute little game that is similar to the cootie game which I think would be fun to try.

We practiced zipping up the zippers on our jackets.

Our crowning event was going to the Zoo. Can I just say our Zoo is terrible. I got half price because we have an aviary membership and M* is free- would never pay full price to go to our zoo. There are hardly any animals!

Sprinkle and Wipe

I saw this super great activity here on Chasing Cheerios. So simple but M* was enthralled.
Materials:
Salt Shaker
Sponge
Baking Pan
Fill the salt shaker with water then let your kiddo sprinkle it into the pan then show them how to suck it up with the sponge. Repeat...repeat...repeat...and again.

Finger printing

We used ink pads to make some finger print art this week. I think next time we do it I'm just going to put a big piece of paper on the table instead of giving her little ones.

C is for...

C is for clothespins.
We practiced putting clothespins on things a lot this week. M* didn't quite get it but she had a lot of fun pretending to clip things on and of course she knew exactly how to get them off. I cut some clothes shapes out of felt and we made a mini clothes line for her to clip them on. She had fun just trying to put them on but I would also ask her to find me the one that was pink or blue etc... and then ask for a specific clothes item like a sock.

For this activity you need clothespins circle stickers (like the garage sale stickers) and bowl or a cup. I used a cool whip bowl and put paper around the outside. Stick different color stickers around the outside and have a coordinating clothes pin for it. I put sticker on the inside and outside of the bowl. M* wouldn't turn the bowl or let me turn the bowl so this way she could do all around it without upsetting her.

C is for cake. We made a cake this week. M* loves to bake. She is a pro and dumping all the ingredients in and stiring them up.

C is for camping.
We set up a tent in my mom's backyard for the day. (I am greatly looking forward to the day when we have our own backyard to set things up in). The first thing we did in our tent was put together a simple puzzle. I used this picture here and cut it up into about 5 pieces. Then we did our caterpillar activities that we had been doing through out the week (see below). And then we went on a "C" hunt. I clipped some papers with the letter C written on them around the tent (using clothespins) and had M* find them and put them in her bag. To finish the camping fun we made some smores in the microwave.

C is for caterpillar.
I found this new great website. This gal is amazing I can't believe how talented she is. We will definitely be using her things as part of our letters. The blog is called Confessions of a Homeschooler. Here is the link to her letter C stuff. Some of it was a little too old for M* but we used the color matching caterpillars, the letter lace card, and the lacing cards for the story "The Very Hungry Caterpillar". All of which M* was able to do with to problem (she is almost 2 just to give you an idea).

Also, just out of pure happenstance we made this cute chicken at the library story time.
You need a cup, a piece of string, a small piece of felt, a small piece of sponge, and something to poke a small hole (we used a skewer). They also gave us eyes and an orange nose (that was torn off before I took this picture) but you could just draw those on.

Poke a small hole in the top of the cup. Thread the string through and tie a knot onto a red piece of felt.
Tie the small piece of sponge onto the bottom of the string. Then let your child color it and decorate it however you want.

When it's done you make it make a noise by wetting your fingers a bit and pulling down on the string. It actually makes a chicken noise it's pretty cool.

I-Spy Bag

Have you seen these? They are so cute. Here is a tutorial here.
Just as a side note I filled mine with rice and it turned out so heavy so don't skip buying the poly fill beads.

Dinosaur Land

This idea came from this super spectacular idea here. Mine is way scaled down compared to the awesomenes that the idea came from but oh well. I must apologize for being terrible and giving tutorials. I don't think to take pictures a long the way until it is done. I found the pack of dinosaurs for this in the dollar bin at target.

First thing I did was cut out to pieces of brown felt for the ground you can make them as big or small as you want.

Cut out the shapes that you want for your grass, water, and whatever else you would like to add. That brown bump in the back of mind is supposed to be a cave but its a little flat. Sew these pieces to your top piece of felt. Also if you would like yours to fold up then put a piece of velcro on each side (You can see mine in front of the the cave and behind the water).
For the trees on mine I glued them to a piece of felt and then stuck some velcro on the bottom of it. That way when it gets folded up you can take them off an lay them down.

The next step is sew the two pieces of the big felt together. I sewed mine wrong side together and then turned it inside out but if I were to do it again I would just put them together right side and sew around the outside since the felt won't fray.

This works great fold up into your bag and take to restaurants especially if you have a toddler that isn't terribly interested in the crayons and paper.

G is for... and B is for..

G is for garden.
We went to the Thanksgiving Point Gardens. We looked at the flowers for a little bit but spent most of our time in the children's garden. M* had lots o' fun hiding in the trees and running in and out of the bear cave.
G is for grow.
I found these at the dollar store you put them in water and then they grow. M* wasn't terribly impressed with the growing part but had lots of fun putting the beans in the water and then taking them back out.
G is for green.
We did a "green" scavenger hunt where we looked for things in the house that were green. M* decided about 10 mins into it that she was done finding green things and wanted to find pink things instead. What a girl.
G is for goat.
We also got a book from the library on goats and made a trip to the farm to look at them but of course we mostly looked at the bunnies instead.

Other things I wanted to do but we didn't get around to was make a giraffe puppet here are the instructions here, plant some flowers (garden), and make gingerbread men.


B is for balloon.
We did a couple things with balloons. The first thing was I hung balloons from the ceiling and let M* hit them with a bat. In the picture below though she had decided that the golf club was a better tool for the job. She was quite distracted by the static electricty. You will notice her small amount of hair is sticking up.
We also painted some balloons. It was a nice change to just painting on paper. I taped ours down onto bigger paper it was easier for her to paint and easy clean up for me. I also saw an idea on perpetual preschool that said to tape a few balloons (not full of air) to a dowel and let the child use it as a brush but we didn't try it so I don't know how well it works.

B is for bird.

We did some bird watching outside our complex. We live right by a canal so there is nice variety. We also took some bird seed out there and threw it out for them.

B is for bubble.

The library had a bubble party (this was my sole reason for doing b on the week we did). M* had lots of fun. We were going to try an activity at home where you tape a clear lid (like on a pringles can) to a flash light and catch the bubbles on it. It's supposed to make it easy to see all the colors in the bubble. I bought cans just for the occasion and threw them out without thinking about it.

Other things I had planned but we didn't have time to do were float some boats in the bath tub (you could make your own or just use a toy boat), and go bug hunting.

D is for

D is for drip. We did a fun art activity with eye droppers.
Materials:
paper towels
paper or Styrofoam plate (if it's paper it needs to be a higher end one that repels water not soaks it in)
3 bowls with water
red, yellow, and blue food coloring

This has 2 parts to it. Put a few drops of food coloring into each bowl. First set up the paper towel on top of the plate and let your toddler squeeze the water onto the towel, it makes a pretty cool painting. Then once he or she is done with that then just let them squeeze water directly onto the plate. The colors will mix to create new ones! As you show them how to squeeze use the word drip as you drop stuff onto the plate and talk about what colors are on the plate.

Just a side note- If you have leftover eye droppers from an empty liquid medicine bottle use that instead of real ones. Why? Because they are plastic. If you have to use the glass ones just make sure they get put away so your toddler doesn't get a hold of one the next day unbeknownst to you and proceed bite and chew the end off while you're not looking...What's that you ask? Why no this didn't happen to us why would you assume that?....okay maybe it did happen.

...and a p.s. I know she looks super unhappy in this picture but this is her concentrating face-it really was a great activity.

D is for dinosaur. We checked out a few dinosaur books and colored some pictures of them. I think some great books are the "How do Dinosaurs..." series M* paid the most attention to them. We also went to the dinosaur museum where we got a dinosaur puzzle to put together. M* hasn't ever really been too exposed or had much of an interest in them but she picked up the word about 30 seconds into the museum. I found a dinosaur egg at dollar tree that you got to dig at and find dinosaur bones. It was a little bit hard for M* but she still had fun with it. I saw a recipe at perpetualpreschool.com that was edible that you can make eggs out of too but we didn't have time to try it this week.

D is for digging. We dug in the dirt and made mud pies this week too. M* loves Snow White so we sang the "dig dig dig dig" song while we dug.

D is for dressing up and dancing. M* put on her tutu and cut a rug. She loves dancing and our letter this week was "D the dancing dinosaur" so we made the sound that D makes while she dances (ddd) while we danced!

A if for

We worked on the letter A and our colors this week.

For colors I took the bottom of an egg carton and colored the pockets each a different color. Then found things for each color for M* to sort out into the cups. She did the "sort the colors" thing for about 10 mins and then she just played with the little things and had a good ol' time. When your child masters the 6 colors then you can add 9 then 12 etc. A is for...
Airplane- we flew paper airplanes around the house on Monday. Make 4 or 5 for your toddler to throw some where and pick up.

A is for...animals. It is currently 2 dollar Tuesday at Thanksgiving Point so I've been planning our letters around what we can do there. We went to the petting zoo and looked at all the animals.

A is for...apple. This was super simple. The tree is just construction paper taped together with small pieces of velcro glued to it. The apples I just cut out of felt and wrote "A" on some "a" on some and "apple" on others. M* then picked them and put them in her basket. Also check out http://www.perpetualpreschool.com/ for some fun apple songs and crafts.


A is for... Alligator. I didn't take a picture of this one-maybe one day I will and I will get it up here. I just painted and Alligator with an "A" on his back on a piece of cardboard and cut out a hole for his mouth and the center of the A. Then I made some quick bean bags and had M* play a toss it in game. Just for the record it looked more like a lizard with a shark fin on his back but M* humored me and called it an Alligator anyway.

We also did our rice pit with the letters in it. Remember when you are doing these activities to emphasize the word that starts with the letter.

F is for...

We are starting doing things using the Amazing Action Alphabet book. You can check our their products at http://www.seeheardocompany.com/ The idea is to do their flip book and then do activities with the letter. You introduce a letter every 2 weeks or so. Along with all these activities we always looked at the flip chart before we started them to review the letter and the sound.

The first thing we did with the letter F is a rice pit. You make a rice pit by buying a small container with a lid I bought a 16 quart and pour a bunch of rice in it. I used 3 bigger bags. I also used beans but I would recommend just using rice. We started with things that are the letter F or start with F, like magnets, cookie cutters, frog, farmer, feather, flag. As your child digs things out say the name with emphasis on whatever letter you are doing it with. After we do the letters M* likes to play in it with spoons, bowls, and measuring cups.

F is for feather.
In the morning we did a craft with feathers. I drew a bird on a paper and then M* glued feathers on it and painted it with water colors. That afternoon we visited the aviary and I pointed out all of the feathers on the bird.

F is for fort and flash light.
We built a blanket fort and played under it all morning. We played with flashlights under it and read books.

F is for fish.
In the morning we did a fish pond. Tie string onto a small dowel or pencil and then glue a magnet onto the other end of the string. Cut out fish shapes and place paper clips on them. On the back of the Fish you can write things like, "jump up and down 10 times" or "sing wheels on the bus". You can spread the fish around the room or I put them in a small basket to keep it a little contained and easier to catch a fish. That afternoon we went to the aquarium. If you don't live by and aquarium you can head to the pet store to look at fish.

F is for face.
I drew different eyes, ears, noses, and mouths and taped them on the wall then had M* move them around to create different faces. Another way to do this would be to put them on flannel or Velcro and use it on the flannel board.

Road Trip

Well vacation season is upon us. We took a nice vacation to the west coast and here are my tips for what they are worth.



The car ride:



First of all I think everyone with kids should have a car vacuum, vacation or no vacation. They are small and they plug into your cigarette lighter. On a vacation where you are in the car a lot it's so nice to be able to get rid of all the crumbs from snacks.



Pack lots of snacks. If you are taking fruit cut it up and put small portions in small zip lock bags. We put all of our cold food in a insulated grocery bag with some frozen water and it worked really well. Make everything able to just be able to grabbed and passed out. Take plenty of wipes for cleaning up the snacks.



If your budget will allow buy some new toys and books and put away until the day of the trip. If you can't do that put some toys away about a month before the trip so that they have a newness about them. You can grab books your child has never seen at the library. Pick interactive books, like the simply look and find books, books with flaps, turny wheels, fold out pages, etc. I would recommend "Curious George Discovery Day" my daughter loves any of the Curious George board books (the board books not the regular books) and "Pat the Bunny Hide and Seek." Also sticker books are super good. I bought some at the dollar store and also bought a vinyl sticker book that worked well.


We bought a car seat tray because there were rave reviews about them. M* wouldn't have anything to do with it and we got along fine without her using it. So I would say save your money.


Break up the drive. Plan on stopping about every 3 hours. We even broke it up bigger by stopping halfway and staying the night.

The Hotel:

If you have you or your partner go upstairs to the room before your kid and childproof what you can. For example we were in our room for 5 minutes and M* broke one of the coffee mugs they put out, almost crushed herself with a table lap and called china with the phone (alright maybe a little exaggeration but not much of one).

Bring the toys in from the car. Subconsciously I thought we would just relax in the hotel room but reality said, "Hello! Have you met your daughter? She doesn't know how to relax." So take something to entertain in the hotel room.

If possible take a pack and play. Especially if you plan on staying in more than one hotel. Having a little consistency in where they sleep will be a big help. Not to mention that hotel cribs look like something out of a horror film.

Places:

You know your toddler best, if they aren't the type to wait patiently for something don't plan on going somewhere where they are going to have to wait a lot unless you are willing to deal with the tantrums that ensue.

We bought a harness backpack. This is one thing that I saw before I was a mom and scoffed at but M* is a runner so we bought one. People pointed and laughed a little at it but I say it's worth the peace of mind.

I had trouble deciding whether to take our big stroller that folds down so M* could take better naps and our cheap umbrella stroller. Due to space constraints we took the small umbrella stroller. M* only slept for 1/2 hour in it and there wasn't really ever a time I was glad I had the small stroller so I say if you can pack your nice one with the basket and fold back seat.

Speaking of nap times bring the lovey with you everywhere if it's small it'll help your little one fall asleep better.

A Website

Whilst surfing the Internet I cam across this super duper site. It is geared to pre-schoolers but they have some great stuff on there that under 3 could definitely have fun with. When you get there you may want to check out some of the stories but you should for sure check out the parents activities they have for each theme.
www.storyplace.org/preschool

And for those of you interested they have an equivalent for elementary school age.