Happy Friday (the 13th 🤪)!  

Hi! Hey! How are ya?! We are back from what felt like a travel marathon- Oklahoma, New York, Houston, California- all in like two months. Let’s just say we’re happy to be home for a little bit until our next trip in January.

A recap from this month:

1. Shay turned TWO in the beginning of December (like what?! the days are long but the years sure are short).

2. Charli hit 7 months old and is starting to crawl! Baby scooting on her belly and some serious planks!

3. We went to HYROX Houston- the energy was awesome, and after watching the event, I definitely got the itch to compete. I will likely be signing up for Dallas in March 2025- you should do it with me!

4. We traveled for 8 days to California (Ventura, Pismo Beach, then San Jose for Gabe for work). I’m sharing below some of our must-have travel items that make it so much easier to travel with a toddler and a baby.

Whenever we travel, we bring our Guava Travel Crib for Shay to sleep in. This trip, we visited my aunt and uncle in Ventura and they had one so we didn’t bring ours. Let me tell you, we ended up really missing ours the rest of our trip as we had to use the pack-n-play from the hotel in Pismo, and then another pack-n-play in San Jose. I honestly never thought I would notice a difference, but the travel crib is SO nice. So easy to set up and break down, and it is easy to transport in the bag it comes with. We usually put him in a big closet or a spare bedroom that we can make really dark and he sleeps SO well.

We brought our Mompush double stroller for this trip, and while Charli is still a little too small to sit in it, having two seats really came in handy in the airport and walking around with the kids on my own. I think in the next couple of months they will both fit perfectly, which is just in time for our next bunch of travel!

These are probably the only teethers we have consistently used with both babies, and they are my favorite to bring when we travel because they’re easy to use and simple to clean. These are great when teeth are coming in and baby is starting solids, but you don’t even need to put food in them for babies to like them. I have frozen breastmilk in the little mold, or popped a piece of frozen fruit in there. At home, I also freeze some puree in the mold and pop that into the teether for lunch or dinner and Charli loves it. 10/10 recommend these teethers.

If you’re traveling and not using packing cubes, you’re missing out on an easier way to pack and keep things organized. Especially now that we are always traveling with littles, it makes fitting everything into our suitcases SO. MUCH. EASIER. I got this set and its perfect- I usually use two smaller ones, Gabe uses the big one, and the kiddos share one. Then we use one of the extra bags for socks & underwear. Seriously don’t sleep on packing cubes.

I have also made some lists on my Amazon storefront for our top baby-friendly toddler toys we’ve bought this year, as well as some active-friendly mom outfits that I’m living in. You can find those on my Amazon storefront here! 

Anywho, that’s all I’ve got for you this week!

See you in a couple of weeks, same time same place.

Xoxo,

Arielle