Guest Post on Urban Planning and Parenting

July 9, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

I have a guest post up at local urban planning and smart growth blog Greater Greater Washington (welcome folks from over there!): If you want a place to welcome kids, make it urban.

Drawing on my experience growing up in a suburban environment and raising a kid in a semi-urban environment, I consider some of the best parts of urbanism that can make places better for kids and parents.

Here’s the first couple of paragraphs:

A child’s surroundings can make all the difference in what and how they learn, and urban places can offer what kids need for healthy development. Here are some ways we can make places kid-friendly.

While zoning meetings aren’t exactly a hot topic on parenting blogs, perhaps they should be. Our neighborhoods’ physical structure strongly influences how residents can raise children. Within the cultural conversation around the Meitiv’s, the Montgomery County couple who Child Protective Services investigated for allowing their children walk home from a park, little of it has been on how communities could make themselves better places for children.

Read the rest at Greater Greater Washington!

A Stellar Second Birthday Party

July 8, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

I know I’m not a “Pinterest mom,” but my mom borders on being a Pinterest grandma. Thankfully, that came in very handy the weekend before last when we hosted Sprout’s second birthday party. Despite the fact that we had to change venues due to flash flood warnings, our Teddy Bear Picnic party ended up being a lot of fun for kids and adults alike.

Knowing this is probably the last year I can pick his party theme, I picked one he would like but wouldn’t choose himself, like dinosaurs or trains. As Teddy Bears’ Picnic seemed like it would be a common theme, I thought it would be easy to find ideas for decorations.

So like a stereotypical suburban mom, I searched Pinterest. While I found a few great ideas, I was rather disappointed. Instead of being overwhelmed by choices, I found two things: 1) the same cute ideas over and over and 2) photos of incredibly elaborate displays with no instructions on how to do them. After looking at several of the posts that fell into category 2, I realized the authors didn’t make the posts with the goal of helping others out. In most cases, the photos were of parties that were run by a party planner, catered, or at least had 90% of the stuff purchased from an expensive bakery. As I have neither the budget or inclination to take any of those options, these photos were pretty, but useless.

With that in mind, I talked to my mom and we chose a few crafty ideas that she could help with. Unsurprisingly, she did an awesome job. She made an adorable pair of bear ears for Sprout – because you better go in disguise to the Teddy Bear’s Picnic – that he actually kept on for a long time (aka more than one minute). While I just asked her to frame the lyrics from the Teddy Bears’ Picnic song in an ordinary picture frame, she went above and beyond by creating a border of picnic tablecloth. She also dragged some decorative old-fashioned picnic baskets out of the basement and her office. I can’t imagine how much paperwork she cleared out of the one.

Unfortunately, as cute as everything was, it couldn’t change the weather. As early as Friday, with a 90% chance of thunderstorm, it was obvious we needed to relocate the party from the park pavilion to an indoor location.

So I took the decorations, red and white tablecloths from the party store, and every teddy bear in the house and headed down to our finished basement. This was part of the executive decision to stay the hell out of everyone’s way this year, as opposed to last year. Both Chris and my mom have exacting visions for their projects that don’t exactly match my areas of competency. While last time I had the excuse of Sprout waking up for hours on end at 2 a.m., I would rather avoid having a panic attack and being miserable to my family again. Instead, I picked up toys, laid out picnic blankets, and arranged stuffed animals and books as artfully as I could manage. With the blankets and camp chairs, it was an indoor picnic, but still definitely a picnic.

In the meantime, Chris and my mom were whipping up delicious picnic food. Using a cookie cutter, my mom cut peanut butter and jelly and peanut butter and honey sandwiches into bear shapes, then drew mouths on with frosting.

She also made little driving bears with Milky Ways, M&Ms, Teddy Graham’s, and melted chocolate chips. (For Americans, the Smarties referred to in the link are like giant M&Ms, not the hard little things everyone picks out of their Halloween candy.) Chris made a deconstructed eggplant parmesan salad with cubes of fried eggplant, roasted tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, basil leaves, olive oil, sherry vinegar, and shaved Parmesan cheese. He made it ages ago and I adored it so much I still remembered it seven years later.

And of course, the cake. With this birthday cake recipe and the buttercream frosting recipe from culinary school, it was definitely the tastiest cake Chris has ever made. It was darn cute too. White frosting with lines of red colored sugar created a picnic blanket. Piping of green frosting around the edges made for convincing looking grass. And stuffed bears from Amazon (12 for $10!) around a piece of honeycomb, on top of a piece of Saran Wrap, made an adorable picnic. It was shockingly hard to find those little bears. We almost had to fall back on Care Bears, of all things.

Before we started, I wanted to see Sprout’s reaction. Last year, he didn’t have a clue what was going on, but this year, he’s already well-versed in the concept of make-believe. I’ve drank enough cups of pretend tea to know that. When he turned into the room, transformed into a teddy-bear fantasy, a big smile spread across his face. He was happy earlier in the day, but this was wonder. It made every bit of decorating worth it.

Once everything was ready, we waited for our guests. And waited. And waited. D.C. guests abide by the “fashionably late” idea and getting little kids out the door is a fight against entropy anyway. Just as I was getting genuinely nervous, our guests started arriving. Even though we had far fewer people show up than invited, it was the perfect number. If we had more, it would have been too crowded in the basement.

As it was, we had 4 kids running around, 1 infant, and a bunch of adults, both parents and not. The setting wasn’t as exciting as a playground, but they enjoyed our toy kitchen and little slide. They were self-sufficient enough that the parents could relax and talk, which everyone appreciated. I always like being able to see my friends.

But my favorite part of the whole day was just before we cut the cake. I held Sprout up to blow out the candles. As the lights were off and everyone was singing, he smiled quietly, his eyes shining. He knew everyone was singing to him out of love.

Later that night, he kept saying, “Happy day.” Happy day indeed.

Bringing Peru to the National Mall: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival

June 30, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Every year, the Smithsonian brings a little piece of somewhere else in the wide world to the National Mall. Although not well-known by tourists, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival is a fantastic event that I always look forward to attending. This year, the Festival focused on Peru, making for a slightly surreal but very satisfying experience, considering I traveled there just a few years ago.

While seeing my personal experiences laid out as exhibits was odd, I was so glad I could share them in a concrete way with Sprout. One of the main tents focused on the highland Peruvians’ yarn-dying and weaving traditions. On our trip, we visited a mountain village, where we saw the women making elaborately patterned scarves and blankets with traditional tools. I still have a scarf I bought there, made of intertwining strands of pink and blue llama wool. At the Festival, they had a more modern version of the set-up, using a portable stove. Inside stainless steel pots, red dye bubbled and produced billows of steam. Sprout loved looking into the pots, feeling the heat and smelling the odd odor of cochineal, a bug used to make brilliant red dye.

Photo of dancers in full costume and masks waiting to parade as part of the Fiesta de la Virgen del Carmen de Paurcartambo

I forgot to take a photo at the Folklife Festival, so here’s an actual photo from our trip.

Similarly, there was a whole tent devoted to the Fiesta de la Virgen del Carmen de Paurcartambo, an amazing festival that we happened to attend through happy coincidence on our way into the Amazon basin. I had never heard of it before our trip; now I was reading a plaque about it on the National Mall! The costumes used in the festival are all bright colors contrasted with black, topped by detailed, grotesque masks that represent 13 different stories in Peruvian culture. Seeing the masks brought back memories of the little convenience store selling cheap plastic versions and the energetic dancers winding down the cobblestone street. Even though we didn’t get to see a dance demonstration, Sprout liked the bird-headed costume, probably because it was pretty obvious what it was.

Other tents highlighted parts of Peruvian culture we completely missed on our trip. Neon-colored posters with elaborately swirly writing were familiar to me, but until then I didn’t realize they were part of a specific art form called Chicha silk-screening that emerged from Cumbia amazónica concert posters. Nearby, an artist was filling in a giant version of the word Liberte over purposely painted graffiti on a huge wall. Afro-Peruvian music provided a soundtrack that I grooved to with Sprout hauled up on my shoulders. A radical radio station that promotes social justice issues in the context of native groups broadcast in both Spanish and English in the next tent over. Seeing the broad array of cultural and political diversity of the country that filled in some gaps in our trip made me value it all the more.

While we had little chance to talk to the people (I had to get back to work), one of the things I like the best about the Folklife Festival is that the staff members are actually from the country and culture being highlighted. They actively choose to share their lived experiences, both the positives and negatives. Unlike some exhibits that put cultures in a convenient little box, the Folklife Festival doesn’t shy away from the economic, social and cultural challenges people face. It also allows real conversations to take place, a cultural exchange that is often very difficult for people who face financial or other barriers to foreign travel. At a previous Festival, I chatted with a Welshman about the political aspects of my favorite band, who are from Wales. As I want Sprout to be exposed to a variety of people’s experiences and backgrounds, the Festival offers a unique opportunity to do so each year. Lastly, it offers an “in” to improve our understanding of our own community. We have a number of South American immigrants in our area, many of them from Peru. At our town’s Memorial Day parade, we saw groups wearing costumes very similar to those we saw on our trip and at the Festival. Whereas I would have just seen them as pretty costumes before, after our trip, I better understood their cultural context.

I wish I could have stayed longer and seen all of the exhibits, talk to the man fixing his fishing net or caught a dance demonstration, but I was so glad we could bring Sprout to the Folklife Festival. It was a really good reminder of why I love living close to the Nation’s Capital.

Guest Post: Kidical Mass Rockville Kick-Off

June 28, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Biking, and particularly family biking, is a passion for me. I want to make our roads safe and fun for everyone to travel on, including children. So to help encourage families to bring their kids on bikes for both recreation and transportation, I lead Kidical Mass rides in our town. Kidical Mass is a national movement to support family biking and we’re one of five of them in the Washington D.C. area – one of the highest densities in the nation!

We had our first Kidical Mass ride of the season last week and it went really well. Thirteen people including six kids showed up to ride to ice cream. I’ve written it up on our Kidical Mass Rockville blog, so check it out!

The Season Starts off Right with Italian Ice!

“How old are you?” “Two!”

June 18, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Dear Lord, my kid is two. How the hell did that happen?

There’s the obvious answer, which I think whenever someone says, “He’s so big!” – “Well, yes, they do tend to grow.”

But as someone who has been there every day, the movement of time and his growth is different to me. I talked about this in my post on his six month birthday and I think it still holds true: kids break the space-time continuum. There’s such a mix of how we as parents process change. Some days, Chris and I gape at his expanding vocabulary or some other new feat. Other days just seem like a repeat of the one before, a well-worn routine. Some days I wish I had infinitely more hours with him and some need to have ended before naptime. Some of those are actually the same day. All of them are exhausting, whether in exhilaration, frustration, or some combination of the two.

And yet, they are each just days. Each moment is longer to him than an adult, so it’s longer to me too. I used to think more in months and years, but those timespans now seem too long to contemplate. I have to plan further ahead now – no impromptu Saturday treks into the city – but each moment is more drawn out, more intensely felt. In my late 20s, a year used to feel like not so long after all; now it again feels like an eternity, as it did when I was a child.

Looking back just a year ago, Sprout’s changed so much. While he couldn’t even walk then, now he’s running, climbing playground equipment, and jumping on the bed. (So much jumping.) On the morning of his birthday, he was even tooling around on his present, a classic blue Schwinn balance bike. His reaction to his first birthday cake was ambivalent, as he made a mess without much of it actually ending up in his mouth. But when he saw the cupcakes we bought him for his second birthday, he started yelling, “cupcake, cupcake!” He’s maintained his ability to quietly observe, but often not-so-quietly observes, pointing and labeling everything that excites him, especially basketballs and buses. He requests songs and tries to sing, even when he knows fewer than half of the words. He knows the names of his favorite books and animals, cherishing them both. He’s willing to try new foods, but also spits them out without regret, handing them over to me with a definitive “no.” Whereas I couldn’t tell when he was little if he was enjoying something, now his smile is so big it consumes me. Even when he’s focused too hard to smile, his eyes dance.

I’ve enjoyed this past year so deeply. Although some people love caring for a newborn, my favorite thing in parenting has been watching Sprout’s personality blossom. While it started emerging in his first year, it truly became so much more vibrant this past one. I also love that when I share my favorite things with him, he’s starting to appreciate them. Even when they don’t work out perfectly, that time spent together is beautiful.

Happy second birthday, to my sweet, lovable, brilliant son. May we have an even more incredible year together to come.

Lullabies for Life

June 15, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

There’s no one like a young kid to make you feel like a stellar singer. I love to sing, but it’s not a God-given talent, or even one that can be bestowed by practice. So I love that Sprout loves me singing to and with him.

I’ve been singing to Sprout since he was born. In his earliest days, I’d hold him in my arms in the middle of the night, singing and pacing up and down our living room. I’d sing almost anything that came to mind – mostly children’s songs, because the lyrics were easy to remember, but occasionally rock favorites too.

The three most common were House on Pooh Corner by Loggins and Messina, a revised version of Rock-A-Bye Baby, and a song borne of my mom’s slight desperation when I was a baby.

I changed Rock-A-Bye Baby because the idea of singing a song about falling out of a tree is a bit dire for a newborn and certainly no reassurance for a nervous mom. In the hospital the night after Sprout was born, Chris helped me come up with a variant. For the last two lines, we substituted out “When the bough breaks, the baby will fall / Down will come baby, cradle and all,” with this geeky replacement: “All of the birdies do sing and call / He’s the best baby, so say we all.” We watched Battlestar Galatica while I was pregnant, so that particular phrase was still fresh in our minds.

My mom’s song, “Rockie rockie baby,” arose out of a similar predicament. When I was born, she couldn’t think of the words of a single lullaby. (Funny, now that she has a mental jukebox of kids’ songs from three decades of teaching.) So she made one up, so simple that even the most sleep-deprived new mom could remember it. It basically consists of the phrases: “Rock/Rockie,” “baby” and “you’re my little baby” in various combinations. So of course, I sang that to him as well, carrying on the tradition.

The love in our voices must have trumped the musical talent, because Sprout still loves to hear both of us sing. He enjoys his Music Together classes and banging on his instruments, but his favorite musical thing is singing with one of us. My mom now sings to him almost every time we FaceTime with my parents. She taught him how to start singing “You are my sunshine,” with her singing most of the parts and him filling in the ends of verses. She’ll sing “You are my…” and he’ll pipe in “sunshine!” with his tiny voice. It’s obscenely adorable. I decided to join in the fun by teaching him “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” I love the night and star-gazing, so it was an appropriate complement.

Sprout’s even started singing back to me when he knows I need it. When I was going through a rough patch a couple of weeks ago, he hugged me, rocked back and forth and sang, “Rockie rockie.” I hugged him tighter, leaned in and listened. It was one of the most comforting things anyone did or could do for me.

I hope that even as he realizes we aren’t very musically inclined, the spirit stays, the hope and the love of our songs.

The Highs and Lows of Camping with a Toddler

June 12, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 7 Comments

The crackling of the fire, the joy of rambling around outside, the sweet goodness of S’mores, the spread of stars in the night sky – all idyllic childhood memories associated with camping. On the other hand, there’s sore backs from sleeping on the ground, damp clothing, and arguments about setting up the tent, considered “character-building experiences” by generations of parents. In Sprout’s first camping trip last weekend, we had a solid mix of both, but more than enough of the former for me to dream of future trips on the way home.

This was our second try at camping with Sprout. We planned on going last year, but ditched the idea when it was supposed to be raining and a high temperature in the 50s. To make up for it, I planned this trip to replace the last one, even going to the same location of Shenandoah National Park.

I don’t exactly know why I’m so keen on camping with Sprout, but there’s something in me drawn to it. I tent camped with my parents as a kid, but I was too young to remember it. Most of my memories are of being in our slightly-cramped pop-up trailer, lying on my back and listening to the rain sound like the water boiling for macaroni and cheese. When I was older, I went tent camping as part of more extensive hiking or rock-climbing trips, with mixed results. While the logical part of my mind says I want to go camping because it’s cheap, my sentimental, romantic side is far more vague, providing a longing for being outside with my family and away from my to-do list.

The trip did a beautiful job fulfilling that desire. Even if there had been cell reception up in the mountains – which there wasn’t – I don’t think I would have picked it up. We were too busy setting up, playing or just being together. I played ball with Sprout in our campsite and watched him vroom his recycling truck in the grass. He loved climbing in and out of the tent so much that he cried when we broke it down the next morning. Sitting at the picnic table, we ate corn and potatoes cooked over an open flame, Sprout hamming it up with the corn cob sticking out of his mouth. We snuggled under blankets, watching the flickering flames and glowing embers. After we put Sprout to bed, Chris and I ate S’mores, drank wine and sat in peace with each other, quiet but not silent. The next day, we hiked down to a waterfall with a wide, long view out to the rest of the forested valley. We ate sandwiches perched on rocks, the green expanse of Big Meadows spreading out behind us.

That’s not to say everything went perfectly. When we tried to play our first game of frisbee, I threw it and hit Sprout right below the eyes. (He was okay.) Sprout had to go to bed before we could introduce him to the wonders of toasted marshmallows. Fortunately, we now know a number of things for our next trip.

Camping can be expensive.
In theory, camping is cheap, compared to staying at a hotel. After all, it was only $20 a night for the site. But that doesn’t include the huge amount of gear required. Before this trip, we already had the vast majority of our gear – a tent, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and a camp stove, totaling several hundred dollars worth of equipment. Despite that, we still ended up dropping almost $200 at Target before we left: a camp lantern, new cooler, non-BPA water bottles, Swiss Army knife, first aid supplies, and groceries for lunch/dinner. While we will use all of the stuff in the future, you really need to like camping to drop the resources on it. For an excellent set of gear check-lists, I recommend The Down and Dirty Guide to Camping With Kids, which has a lot of good advice on family camping in general.

Check the campsite location.
This issue was totally and utterly my fault. When I looked up Shenandoah National Park on Google Maps, I was pleasantly surprised to see it was only an hour and a half away. Except that I forgot Shenandoah is 150 miles long. More importantly, I forgot our campsite was located half-way down Skyline Drive, which has a speed limit of 35 mph. Knowing exactly where our site was would have saved us some time (we could have gone in a different entrance) and stress of having an annoyed toddler in the backseat for that long.

Setting up and breaking down will take more time than expected, especially if you want to use the fire to cook with.
Chris and I have done a remarkably low amount of camping together due to his previous work schedule. As a result, the large majority of my camping experience has been with a group where I was not the one primarily responsible for setting up and breaking down the campsite. While I have the skills to do it, I was never cognizant of the timing. As it turns out, it takes a really long time to set up (and break down) a campsite, especially when you have a small child to keep an eye on. In particular, getting the fire going and having big enough flames to cook with takes ages. I had planned on getting there, setting up the site, and driving back out for a short hike before dinner. Ha. Between getting in later than anticipated and stoking the fire, we ended up not eating dinner until 8 PM. Thank goodness our neighbors with a giant RV gave us half a bag of charcoal or we would have been there all night.

An easy bedtime makes no guarantees.
By the time we finished dinner, Sprout was exhausted and antsy, bordering on chaotic naughty. Seeing no good to come in the future if he stayed up, I brought him into the tent and started a camping version of the bedtime routine. But when I tried to put him in the pack-and-play, he refused to lie down. I wasn’t going to push the issue, so I just kissed him goodnight and left, hearing no complaints in my wake. Fast-forward an hour and a half, when we heard panicked yelling just past 11 PM. So much for that plan. I went in to find him still sitting up, how he must have fallen asleep. After I picked him up, it took a good 10 minutes to calm him down. There was no way in hell I was leaving that tent without waking up half of the campground.

Be prepared to change sleeping arrangements.
Instead of trying to get Sprout back down in the pack-and-play, I got into my pajamas and snuggled down with him. Unfortunately, it was dark and I didn’t have the patience or extra hands to go searching for his sleeping mat. As a result, I ended up half-way off my sleeping mat, freezing for half the night because I couldn’t zip up my sleeping bag. If I had his sleeping mat and bag next to me prepared for such a situation, I probably would have had a more pleasant night.

Don’t underestimate morning dew; bring plenty of extra clothing.
Just walking around in the grass covered in morning dew, Sprout completely soaked his sneakers, socks, and the bottom half of his pants. I either wear Tevas or hiking boots camping, so I never really thought about it, but the grass was really wet. Thankfully, Chris had an extra pair of pants and his water shoes in the diaper bag.

Appreciate camping for camping – everything else is a bonus.
Fortunately, we had time in the morning to get in a lovely hike out of Big Meadows. However, I ended up abandoning plans both for getting in a shorter hike that Sprout could have done and seeing a birds of prey show at the Visitors’ Center. Between setting up, breaking down, and getting out before naptime, there simply wasn’t space in the schedule. While I was a little disappointed, Chris reminded me that while those other activities were nice, they really weren’t the point of camping. The point was to be out in nature, together as a family. Which we definitely accomplished.

While many things didn’t go quite as planned, I’m remembering the beauty that we did experience. Plus, I’ve already picked our next two camping destinations.

A Tale of Two Playgrounds

June 9, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Sometimes I overestimate my child’s inherent adventurousness. I forget that just because an experience is similar to one’s Sprout’s had before – and even enjoyed – it can seem radically new to him. That happened recently at the Splash Playground and Adventure Playground at the massive South Germantown Recreation Area. Thankfully, it wasn’t too traumatic for anyone and set the foundation for future summer trips to the pool.

I had heard from a number of parents that both the sprayground (which backs up to mini-golf) and the Adventure Playground were must-sees for families with young kids. As the temperatures were going to be climbing past 90, it seemed like the perfect way to kick off the summer.

The sprayground is a stand-alone facility – no swimming pool – with an array of fountains, waterfalls, squirting animals, and dumping buckets. A spiral of fountains form a labyrinth, which would be perfect for some bathing suit meditation if you weren’t surrounded by screaming children. I enjoyed wandering through the fountains, as well as running under the barrage of water flowing off of a fake cave.

On the other hand, Sprout was much more hesitant. He stood where we put him down, watching the other kids run around him, yelling and splashing. When other children brushed by him, he looked a little startled, but didn’t really react. After about 5 minutes, he finally stuck one hand and then the other in a small shower coming off of the side of the slide next to him. He chilled there for about 10 more minutes, looking at other kids when they blocked his access to the shower, but not complaining. While he considered going down the slide, which was much smaller than his normal playground slides, he never did. Every time he got to the top, he looked at me and said “No” in his little voice, emphasis on the “O.” Finally, the adults (okay, me) got bored and found an excuse to bring him over to a couple of animals that squirted water. He sat on those for a while, not really doing anything but watching. We finally found an activity he seemed to genuinely enjoy with splashing in shallow puddles, followed by snack-time.

The Adventure Playground was a much bigger hit. Themed like a castle and pirate ship, The Playground was two separate multi-story wooden structures surrounded by smaller pieces like swings. It had wobbly bridges, huge slides, and lots of hiding places. It reminded me of the Commons, a massive wooden playground in my hometown that involved a giant community building effort. I spent many fond hours of summer camp scaling those wooden beams.

In contrast to the water area, Sprout headed right in to the Playground. He loved climbing up and down the stairs, many of which were at odd angles or made of unusual materials like rubber. He also enjoyed ducking into the winding paths under the low-headway structures. My dad was with us and it was amusing to watch him fit his six-foot-tall-plus frame underneath to follow.

Watching Sprout’s different reactions to the two places reminded me how similar he can be to my husband Chris. When Chris enters a situation with a lot of people he doesn’t know, like a party, he stands on the edge, listening. While he’s engaged, he’s just absorbing what’s going on, not contributing. Sprout is the same way. Since the day he was born, he was observant, taking in the situation before acting. While he had been to a pool before – even a fancy one with fountains in Disney – it was so long ago he didn’t remember it. That new sensation, combined with the chaos of screaming children, was a lot to process. In contrast, he’s spent hours upon hours at the playground across the street from our house, so he was much more familiar with the basic idea.

While I won’t shy away from exposing Sprout to new experiences or adventures, I will remember to be aware of the time and energy he needs to adjust to new situations. I want to teach him how to try new things but do so on his own terms.

Visiting Las Vegas with Toddlers and Young Kids

June 2, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 5 Comments

Tips for Bringing Toddlers and Young Children to Las Vegas

Las Vegas isn’t usually a place for families with toddlers or young kids; except when it is. We recently visited Chris’s sister and brother-in-law, Melissa and Steve, who live in the Vegas suburbs. In planning the trip, we found plenty to do for families of young children and had a great time with four days full of kid-friendly activities. We even could have filled a few more days if we had the time.

Whether you’re visiting relatives in Vegas or en-route to somewhere else, here are a few tips for bringing a toddler or other young child to the Las Vegas region:

1) Know that you’re going to be judged and just deal with it.

You could be bringing your child to get medical treatment in Vegas and you’d get snark from someone on the plane. We had a couple different people comment to him “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” and warning him not to drink too much, despite my protestations that we were visiting family. And God forbid you bring your kid to the Strip. When I was with Chris on our night out, I know I silently judged people (then realized better), despite the fact that we brought Sprout there only a few days earlier! Just explain why you’re there (or not), smile and move on.

2) Be selective about the Strip.

Honestly, the Strip is far from an ideal location for little kids, amongst the sex, drugs and gambling. Thankfully, they’re too little to understand any of it and there are some neat things of interest. Personally, we spent a little less than half a day there and it was perfect.

Before you go, know what you want to see. The place is huge and all of that walking can put a strain on even the most patient toddler or parent carrying/pushing them. We knew we wanted to see the Flamingo’s wildlife exhibit; the Bellagio’s gardens, glass ceiling, and fountain show; and the Mirage’s volcano show. We also planned to go the talking statues in Caesars’ Palace, but ran out of time. All of them worked out beautifully except the volcano show, which scared Sprout. He was fine until the end, which was really loud and bright and I think caused a bit of sensory overload.

Other activities in that area that seemed pretty family-friendly included the High Roller Ferris Wheel (very similar to the London Eye), the Mirage’s Secret Garden, the trip up the Paris’s “Eiffel Tower” and the Mandalay Bay’s Aquarium. However, all of those were pretty expensive so we skipped them. On the other end of the Strip, slightly older kids might like the lions at the MGM and the themes of New York, New York; the Luxor (Egyptian); and (medieval-lite castles).

3) Think beyond the Strip.

While many tourists never leave there, there’s a whole host of things to do for families off of the Strip. Las Vegas is an increasingly popular area for families to live – 350,000 kids in the school district! – and the area is trying to accommodate that growth.

A giant, multi-story playground that looks like a treehouse

I couldn’t get a good angle, but the playground was very cool.

A few blocks from Fremont St. is an upcoming area in the process of being redeveloped. One of the newest additions is the Downtown Container Park, a self-enclosed pedestrian shopping and entertainment era. Visitors are welcomed by a fire-breathing preying mantis and enter a lovely plaza with restaurants and shopping. We browsed an awesome retro toy store that is trying to “bring back pogs” (my mid-90s childhood appreciated the effort) and bought a shirt from the company Out of Print at a children’s clothing store. But the centerpiece of the complex is a giant, multi-story playground, with multiple slides, giant foam building blocks, and a sound/lights based movement game. I got excited and was a little disappointed that we needed to leave right after I finished shopping.

Another fabulous place to visit was Springs Preserve, a natural / state history museum / conservation center appropriate for all of the local schools’ field trip needs. Among its many exhibits, it included a simulated flash flood, live desert animals, the University of Nevada’s second place house for the US Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon, desert adapted gardens, energy conservation arcade games, a desert-themed play area, and a train ride. Despite my deep love for state museums, we didn’t even get to the Nevada State Museum, which was also on the premises! Of course, Sprout’s favorite parts were the sandbox and water mister, but I admit they looked pretty fun. We didn’t have time, but the Discovery Children’s Museum also looks fantastic, with another multi-story climbing structure.

4) See some non-party animals.

Besides the flamingos, parrots, hummingbirds, and fish at the Flamingo and the tortoises, rabbits and tarantulas at Springs Preserve, there are also two mom-and-pop animal rescue facilities right near each other in the Vegas suburbs.

The Farm in Las Vegas is a homespun facility featuring a variety of farmyard critters, from huge cows to fluffy chickens. It features handwritten signs, old-fashioned mall toys (that no longer run, but are apparently awesome to climb up on), a number of local foodstuffs, and a substantial flock of peacocks. We actually bought peacock and bantam hen eggs and fried them up for breakfast at Melissa and Steve’s later on. While it isn’t a “petting zoo,” the manager did allow us to pet the giant potbellied pig, Kevin Bacon. Of course, among all of this, my kid and a few others decided their favorite thing was the sun-bleached toy kitchen in a weird little fenced-in area. It was a little slice of rural country life in suburban Las Vegas.

They escaped pretty easily. This one literally jumped straight up.

Right down the road, the Gilcrease Nature Sanctuary is another volunteer-run, passion project that seems to take in any animals the greater Las Vegas region has to offer them. Goats that escaped their pen – including an adorable baby – roamed around, horses mixed with chickens, emus eyed my shiny phone, and ducks and swans swam together. While not nearly as polished as a tourist attraction, it’s hard to beat for only $4 a person. Plus, it’s nice to support a local, family-run organization that’s working to help animals that would have nowhere else to go otherwise.

5) Go hiking.

Only a half-hour or less from Las Vegas is Red Rock Canyon National Recreation Area. Red Rocks is exactly what is says in the title – spectacular red rocks, ranging in hue from orange-red to dark blood maroon. There’s a substantial interpretive exhibit at the Visitor’s Center that looks at the earth, air and water and how they relate to the landscape and human history of the place. For the littles, there are cool brass animal sculptures to sit on, desert tortoises to spot, and a Zoetrope to spin.

Red rock formations on the Calico Trail at Red Rocks National Recreation Area.

The view from the Calico Trail.

Going down the 17 mile one-way Scenic Road, you catch a number of spectacular outlooks and hiking trails. We did part of the Calico Tanks trail, which wandered down a canyon and was 1 mile each way. Labeled as moderate, it had a little bit of mild rock-scrambling, but was totally doable with a toddler in a baby backpack. It isn’t well-marked at all (totally disorienting for someone used to forest hikes), but it’s also pretty easy to orient yourself. If you are sharp-eyed, you can often spot rock-climbers scaling Red Rocks’ famed cliff-faces. While Sprout was content gazing at the scenery for the first half of the hike, he decided he absolutely needed to walk Melissa and Steve’s little terrier halfway through. As much of the path was neither toddler or small dog friendly, this resulted in a public, loud and potentially dangerous meltdown on the trail. He calmed down enough for Chris to carry him sans-backpack, but it almost gave me a stress-induced aneurysm. So great trail – if your kid is a little more patient than mine.

We had originally planned to let him walk the 3/4 mile paved Children’s Trail. Unfortunately, between the meltdown delay, the closeness of naptime, and an approaching rainstorm, we left the park instead. The start of the Trail has picnic tables with beautiful scenery and ancient Native American pictographs that are worth stopping at even if you don’t have time to do the whole thing.

I also highly recommend bringing your own water and lunch. Red Rocks is run by the Bureau of Land Management, not the National Parks Service, so there is very limited food or vending on site.

5) Bring the baby backpack if you have one and leave the stroller at home.

Despite the Red Rocks rebellion, the baby backpack was immensely useful. I had to convince Chris to add it to our absurd amount of luggage, but it was worth it.

In Red Rocks, we would have been able to do only the simplest hikes without it. On the Strip, it gave him a birds’-eye view of everything, the opposite of what he would have had in a stroller. He loved looking at all of the bright signs, flashing lights and sketchy knock-off Disney characters (I’m looking at you, off-brand Olaf!). Plus, the narrow, crowded sidewalk would have been obnoxious to navigate in a stroller. While I love our stroller for everyday transportation, the baby backpack is much better when there’s a lot to see and you don’t want your kid stuck at looking at knees all day. Plus, no one handed my husband cards for “sexy ladies” while he was wearing the backpack. Even Vegas hawkers know there are some lines you just don’t cross.

6) Don’t assume the temperatures will be super hot.

Yes, Vegas can be very hot. But it isn’t all of the time. In mid-May, it barely went into the low-80s and it was usually too cold to go in Steve and Melissa’s pool. I was very glad I brought my jeans and spring jacket. Even when it’s climbing past 100, a lot of places are absurdly air conditioned as a response, making them feel freezing cold. Having back-up clothes and wells thought out extra layers is a good bet.

7) Visit a relative with a dog and a pool.

Obviously, this is not an option for everyone. But chasing Melissa and Steve’s little terrier around -and being chased back – was unquestionably Sprout’s favorite part of the trip.

We'll Eat You Up – We Love You So

The Adventures of a Mom Just Trying to Make a Difference