Traveling with the kids was grueling. Heck, just driving to JFK is hard enough but then we had to endure an 8 hour flight to Barcelona (thank you Delta for the free upgrade to Business Class!) with Mateo who is the world’s worst flyer. I think if it were not for the fact that we were in the air, they would have kicked us off the plane! Parents, don’t try to fly a long haul flight with your child on your lap. Its a terrible idea. Spend the money and buy your kid a ticket!

Here is my commentary on things that helped us survive the trip. Your experience in Spain may vary .

There are some really super child friendly things about Spain that I appreciated. Spaniards are generally loud, so they don’t get upset when kids make noise. Many Spanish streets are closed to cars, so kids can play in the street. Restaurants often have open spaces next to them (or playgrounds) so you can let your kids run wild while you enjoy your meal (until 1 AM). And the beaches are amazing. The Mediterranean is far warmer than the Atlantic and the waves are gentler.

I was fairly well prepared for the trip. I tried to bring what I needed instead of buying it in Spain. Generally, I have observed, its difficult to buy things in Spain. The stores are closed on  from 1:30-5pm and on Sundays. And the stores are generally poorly stocked in small towns. And the prices of nearly everything except fruits and vegetables are much higher. If you are in Spain and need to buy hard to find things, try to locate the “chino” which is a general store operated by Chinese people.

Essential things that I packed:

1. A portable DVD player was indispensable. Its exhausting to entertain kids all day (and all night when they have jet lag and don’t want to sleep). The DVD player really helped to keep the kids quiet at mealtimes, or at bedtime. We got a Portable DVD Player and to extend the battery life we got an Energizer Rechargeable Power Pack. I also bought kid size headphones. For DVDs I had Dora, Barney, Baby Einstein and Toy Story.
2. I bought a pack of 16 Squinkies as an incentive for good behavior. If Matilda was well behaved, she got one Squinkie every night as a prize.
3. Sunblock. They have sunblock in Spain, but the products we have in the USA seem to be way better. You have to try Hawaiian Tropic Island Sport Sunblock Continuous Spray. Its a spray on sunblock that dries instantly and is not greasy. The spray is great, you don’t even have to rub it in.  Then for the face, we used Sunblock Stick.
4. Refillable water bottles. Again, they have them in Spain, but the ones that I got here were way better. Tommee Tippee Explora cup is my new favorite toddler cup. Its like the kind of cups that you get at Starbucks for your coffee, but for kids, and leakproof.
5. Bug spray. In Spain, there is something that they call a “mosquito tigre” which is a yellow striped, non-noturnal mosquito. I tried Natrapel which is a non DEET spray (it uses picaridin). I sprayed it on the window screens and window frames and it kept the bugs away. It smells good too!
6. Insulated cooler bag. Ever notice that kids never want to eat at mealtimes, but then complain of hunger a little later? I carried food with me at all times.
7. Zip lock bags and Tupperware. Believe it or not, when Spaniards make a sandwich to eat later, they wrap it in a napkin. You get a lot of puzzled looks when you explain why its useful to have tupperware or sandwich bags. They generally never eat on the go and taking your leftover food away from a restaurant is unheard of. Ziplock bags are hard to find in Spain. I carried ziplock bags with me all the time so I could wrap up leftovers, carry snacks and put dirty/wet clothes away.
8. Water shoes (aka aqua socks). Its a good idea to get these for the whole family. Your beach may not have sand, but pebbles. They hurt your feet. On the plus side, its cleaner.

Being away from home for so long was hard. I ended up spending a ton of money to make life easier:

1. Its traumatizing for the kids to be away from their things. We packed some things from home, but we ended up getting the kids many new toys. I am a big fan of the Imaginarium stores that are all over Barcelona. I also liked the Abacus stores, which are stationary stores (papelerias) that sell crafts, markers, notebooks and educational toys.
2. Matilda really wanted to have her own sleeping space and was unhappy about having to sleep on a sofa or share the bed with us. We bought each kid a little inflatable bed and sleeping bag.
3. We also bought collapsible boxes to store clothes and toys (kind of like these, available at the “chino” store). Each kid had their own box to hide their things. For Pablo and I, it was easier to use the boxes than it was to have to open the suitcase everyday. Also, opening a suitcase for 25 days straight is just plain unpleasant.
4. I went to the supermarket to get foods that are familiar to the kids. As far as Asian foods go, I was able to find soy sauce, but not sesame oil.  Some supermarkets had ramen noodles.
5. We ended up buying another stroller. Even thought Matilda does not use a stroller at home, she needed one for the trip. Believe it or not, the cheapest, crappiest umbrella stroller we could find cost 50 Euro! (around $70)

Useless things that I packed:

• My kindle – I never got more than 5 minutes to myself to read.
• My ipod – We used it a bit in the car, but I never really had time to listen to music by myself.
• Video camera –  We were too busy trying to keep everyone happy to actually shoot video! I used the video function on my camera instead.
• My sneakers and exercise gear – again, who has the time to exercise?

Like this post? Please visit my new blog www.spanishfavorites.com where I post about things and places that I love about Spain!

And the design is wonderful. Even though we can afford to buy furniture from other places we always buy IKEA because we love the way it looks.

When it came time to redo our bathroom we decided to go with the Ikea GODMORGON Cabinet ($199 + extra for the legs) and mirror. The brilliant design allows you to have two full size drawers. It gives you tons of storage and comes with neat little dividers.

We chose a BRÅVIKEN sink to go with it ($179.00). The sink is really shallow and wide. Its an interesting design and very european/modern looking.

And for our faucet we chose GRUNDTAL ($89.99), a sleek faucet with a neat mechanism for turning the water on and off.

We started by assembling the cabinet. Pablo and I are pros at this by now and it went quickly and easily. I was impressed by the quality of the materials.

Then came time to connect it to our plumbing and this is where it all went very wrong.

We got under the cabinet and removed all of the old plumbing. I assembled the PVC pipes that came with the Braviken sink and realized very quickly that the pipes are much narrower than the metal ones that we had previously.

Stymied, I started assembling the faucet since I already know how to change a faucet. To my chagrin I realized that the connectors were not the same size as what I had previously AND the cords were too short!

I went to IKEAfans to see if any advice could be found and I found some posts warning people about the fact that the connectors will not work with American plumbing. You would think that IKEA would perhaps warn you of this! (And yes, I realize that the world is metric except the USA, but that is besides the point).

Here is what the drawing the manual looks like. As you can see there are no instructions on how to connect the end of the pipe (bottom left) to your plumbing. IKEA considers that to be 100% your problem. In their defense, everyone’s plumbing is different, so they have no way of knowing what you have.

I made a call to my local hardware store and they suggested that I try Brother’s Plumbing Supply in Elmsford.

I made the trip out and thankfully, they knew EXACTLY what to do. The Grundtal faucet has a 1/2″ IPS connector, my old sink uses 3/8″ compression fitting. So I needed an adapter/extension shown below. The brass part is the adapter which I guess allows me to connect the two female parts. The adapter is the webbed hose part.

Click to enlarge

And for the waste pipe I needed a reducing nut and washer. What you do is put the rubber washer on the smaller IKEA supplied pipe. Then put the nut on it. Screw the nut into the waste pipe that you have and voila, it fits!

Total cost of materials was $19.00.

And here is a pic of it all put together!

My final review on the sink/faucet/cabinet. The finished product is beautiful, but don’t buy it unless:

• Your hot/cold shutoff pipes are short. Ours protude 4.5 inches from the wall. Further out, and you will not be able to open and close the drawers in the Godmorgon cabinet.We were fortunate that our hot/cold pipes are relatively flush against the wall. If they had stuck out another inch or two the sink would not be touching the wall. And who wants a sink that is 1″ away from the walls?
• You are replacing something that is the same width as your current vanity. This goes for any sink. The faucet and the drain hole need to be located in line with your waste line.
• If the above don’t apply then you should be willing to hire a plumber to redo the pipes under the sink, move the plumbing etc…

Further reading: If you are more knowledgable at plumbing that I am (not hard!) then you might be interested in:

• Steve’s Blog – He explains how to install an Ikea faucet.
• Parkerman’s photos on Flickr – I found this on IKEAfans. He discarded the pipes that came with the Braviken and did it with American fittings.

PS Today, while at the plumbing store, I learned that this is not called a “Monkey Wrench”. Its called a pipe wrench. They guys at the store were both offended and amused that I used the term which is an anachronism.

Before

After

Its called a Nelson Saucer Lamp. The design is by American designer George Nelsen. It was designed in in 1947 and is part of the permanent collection of the MoMA.

I love the way it goes with my mid-century design chairs!

From what I have read its like Facebook, for your BABY! Perhaps I live too deeply in the technical world, (I registered the domain name for Matilda the DAY SHE WAS BORN), but I think lots of people want to create online spaces for their kids to let friends and family know what is new with their little one. Quite a few friends have asked me to help them put together sites like this one for their kids.

Totspot, from what I can guess in the screenshot and what I have read online, will let you post photos, videos, and milestones for your baby. This is great because right now, I have the photos on Flickr, and the videos on Vimeo and the blog on her site. It would be nice to have it all centralized. The profiles are not available to the public which is great for parents concerned about privacy (poor Matilda, no privacy).

There is another site called babyspot that does a similar thing that launched recently, but the design inst as cool. Bundlo and MyBabyYourBaby make baby websites which look pretty nice, but don’t have that web 2.0 zing.

By the way, I am a sucker for ways to combine technology and babies, but this just looks crazy. Sure, we all would love to have these kinds of metrics, but who wants to enter all that data in? Trust me, I tried to keep an Excel spreadsheet of poops, pees, pumpings and feedings when Matilda was first born. If it didn’t work for me, it wont work for many.

We decided to get Matilda one gift and one gift only. I spent a lot of time looking online and this is what we picked out. Its from Haba, which is one of my favorite toy brands. If you like that stuff, check out my new favorite toy store http://www.moolka.com/.

It turned out that the bottles we were using (Playtex with the Drop In liners) are BPA free, so we didn’t have anything to be concerned about. We also bought BornFree sippy cups which are BPA free and a Playskool straw cup.

How do you know if a bottle, or other container is BPA free? Make sure that the plastic is not super hard. It should give slightly when you press it and it should be a little cloudy.

Also, things that have a #7 recycle sign contain BPA, such as Lexan and Naglene.

People ask me how it works so here is all the info.

We use a diaper service called Tidy Diaper (tidydiapers@aol.com). They pick up and deliver 80 diapers a week for the bargain price of $16.95 a week. Thats roughly the same price as disposable diapers. You could of course wash your own diapers and then it becomes much cheaper than disposables!

Anyway, the diapers they deliver are called pre-folds, or some people call them Chinese pre-folds. They look like this:

You fold them in thirds and then insert them into diaper covers. Here is a page that explains how to use them, or watch these videos. You can rent diaper covers from the diaper service, but we bought our own. We tried a few brands like Prowrap, Thirsties, Dappi, Bummis and Bumpy.

Of all the covers I have tried so far, my favorite (and the cheapest) are the Dappi covers. They come in a cute pink polka dot pattern and have important features like mesh on the inside to keep the plastic lining away from the baby’s skin, leg gussets and back gathers to prevent leaks, a wide velcro area, covers on the velcro tabs and the ability to fold the velcro in for washing to prevent the velcro from messing up other things in the wash. They are nice and cottony instead of plastic-y.

We also tried the G-diaper which is kind of a cool concept. Check it out.