A Month of Escapes, Real and Imagined: What Did You Miss?

Wrapping up this month of wandering (in fact or just in mind) feels like settling in again, happily, after a trip.  It was so good to be away, and it is so good to be home. 

We listened to our favorite summer music; we listened to our favorite children's books on CD. 

We used our best travel lifesavers, and we leveraged the pages and pages of info in all of our favorite family travel resources and books.  We even conquered the worst of air travel with an indispensable guide to all local airports! 

We spent a lazy afternoon at the baseball field. 

We camped out, sometimes even outside! 

We escaped into Bert's chalk-drawn wonderland with Mary Poppins. 

We licked a drippy ice cream cone (or ten). 

We pretended we were far, far away, even if just for dinner.  And for dinner -- as well as every other meal -- we hewed happily to the wonderful advice of our guest, Jodi Liano, for inspiration. 

We took a spin through the Big Apple, New York City.  We let our minds wander through China to ready ourselves and our kiddos for the Olympics.  We spent the Bastille Day of our dreams in Paris.  We went to even farther spots -- the spots that only wonderful books can take us. 

We claimed our getaway car (or rocket). 

We followed as our amazing Being Savvy local writers walked us through one - two - three days of the essential visitor's guides to their cities all across North America. 

We took measure of this great big world. 

We got away without even getting away -- and our guests from Work It, Mom taught us to call that a staycation. 

We were inspired by quotes from Robert Louis Stevenson, Shel Silverstein, Christina Henry de Tessan and Woody Guthrie. 

We kept track of all ourwonderful memories. 

In short, we soaked up the unmistakable signs of summer. 

And we loved every minute of it -- hope you did too!

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A word of warning: get your goggles and flippers ready for tomorrow!  You're going to get wet!!

SavvyPicks: Best Family Travel Resources

As you know by now in our meander through a month's worth of daydreaming about escapes, we truly adore getting away with our families.  And we are daunted by it, too. 

When we do set our sights on different environs, we turn to the following essential resources for planning, packing, investigation and inspiration.  Here are our Savvy-est picks for family travel resources:

• The Savviest Insiders' Guides of All:  Being Savvy's own three-day essential guides for vacationing from San Diego to Boston, Vancouver to Tampa and everywhere in between!  (For the everywhere in between, choose your city from the drop-down menu in the Being Savvy near you box on the Savvy Source home page and look for the three-day guides posted earlier this month!)
• The best place to find luggage for kids:  Little Jet Set
• The best place to find travel essentials for kids (and more luggage ideas): Madallie
• The best place to find luggage and all travel essentials for the whole family:  Flight 001
• The best way to plan a walking tour:  Bugaboo Day Trips
• The best overall travel book spot: Chronicle Books gems for travelling with kids
• Our Savvy secret weapon for renting the stuff (from baby gear to toys(!)) that we can't bear to haul: Baby's Away
• The loveliest four words in family travel planning, because they mean you are about to get the inside scoop: We Just Got Back!
• The Euro-centric way of family travel planning, which we love for its far-flung destinations and it's sense that it's all possible (plus, packing tips are universal): Baby Goes 2
• The best site for high-end trips (or free daydreaming): Ciao Bambino
• Most reliable forecasts (including weather that evolves during the course of the day like Midwestern thunderstorms and San Francisco fog): Accuweather
• Best overall filter for fresh travel ideas:  Kirtsy's travel section

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Still looking for an easy summer escape from the grind and the routine? There's one ready made for preschoolers and parents at every ball park in the country. Yup, these kids of ours really enjoy an afternoon at a baseball game. The pleasures are many: spotting favorite players, keeping score, hot dogs, popcorn and a little lemonade, perhaps a nice nap during the middle innings (we can always hope).... It's at least four hours spent away in another world, the world of baseball -- a parallel universe with its own jargon, rules, history, heroes, dress code, and, of course, food.

Speaking of which, did you see The New York Times' survey of ballpark food around the country? It's actually mouthwatering -- who would have thunk it?

We mention it because, just like anything with preschoolers, the key to a great time at the game is a well-fed and reasonably rested child, and hopefully a bit of insider knowledge about kid-friendly aspects of the place you are visiting. For the latter, look no further than our Being Savvy city guides to ballparks around the country. To discover what's most fun for the kiddos about your very own ballpark, see the drop-down list "Being Savvy near you" on our home page and look up your hometown.

The other key, of course, is getting your little one into the game before you drop them into the middle of the ballpark. So get out there and bat some balls around, and later curl up with some wonderful books that introduce the fundamentals. Here's our Tuesday list of ideas for doing just that

• H is for Home Run: A Baseball Alphabet by Brad Herzog. This well-done alphabet book offers words and phrases as well as definitions and explanations of key baseball concepts. Famous players and stadiums are highlighted (J is for Jackie Robinson, W for Wrigley Field), as well as elemental features of the game (O, of course, is for three strikes you're Out). The youngest novice will enjoy the catchy rhymes and lovely pictures. Older preschoolers will delight in the baseball facts jam-packed into the book's margins: did you know that twelve former little leaguers have been elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame? If you needed any inspiration to get your tee-ball set up in the back yard or at the playground, here it is.
• My Baseball Book by Gail Gibbons. The lingo is one thing -- how it all fits together as a game, well, that's where it gets complicated. If your little one has been bitten by the baseball bug, and yet you yourself are not the all-knowing baseball sage that you are suddenly expected to be, this handy volume comes right to your rescue. Savvy as we parents may be in virtually every other aspect of life (yeah, right!), not all of us are completely crystal clear on the difference between a fly ball and a foul ball. And that's okay, really. But if you find yourself feigning temporary deafness when you hear the question "What's a strike zone, Mama?" then do consider this little book which explains it all, from the equipment to the rules of the game, from the first pitch to the last out. You and your wee player will feel a whole lot savvier, we promise.
• Triple Hit Baseball by Fisher Price. But enough with the books, already! We're talking about baseball here! The only words you need to know are ball and bat, and the only toy you'll want is this ingenious tee/pitching device from Fisher Price. This is one of those toys that truly grows with your child, keeping step with his or her developing skills. For the beginner, it works as a tee; for the "rookie" player, it offers pop-up pitches; and for the child who is ready for the next step, it turns into a veritable pitching machine. Any young player is bound to get hours and hours of fun for years on end out of this toy -- what more could we ask for? Well, maybe just a few extra balls so that we don't spend the rest of eternity chasing down the three included here (additional balls are available from the manufacturer, and wiffle balls, apparently, work too, so step up to the plate!).
• Take Me Out to the Ballgame by Jack Norworth and Jim Burke. Yes, you know the song. Perhaps you've even found yourself crooning this old tune as you lull your little tee-ball slugger to sleep on a summer's eve. It doesn't get any better than that, right? Oh, but it does. This lovely illustrated volume gives us the history behind the song, and the complete lyrics. Who knew that this ever popular tune was composed almost one hundred years ago? Who knew that the song is about a girl named Kate who is crazy for baseball? You'll learn all that and much more baseball lore from these pages, and your small fan will add a classic American song to her repertoire. And don't be surprised when she too demands that you take her out to a ballgame.

All the Way to China

When you can barely conceive of the other side of town, the other side of the world can sound awfully intriguing. We know certain small explorers who have imagined that they might be able to get all the way to China through a hole in the ground, if they could just dig it deep enough. They send their dolls and action figures down to check if there is a light at the end of the tunnel – they haven’t seen it yet, but are still trying.

The tunnel to China project in the backyard may last for years, but luckily the little ones can get there ever so easily just by opening a few books. A number of children’s classics take them there, such as The Story About Ping, Tikki Tikki Tembo and The Empty Pot (our personal favorite), as do an array of more recent titles. Of the latter, we particularly like The Great Race: The Story of the Chinese Zodiac, The Moon Lady, and Chinese Children's Favorite Stories.

This summer is, of course, an especially good time for our children to learn a bit about China as they also learn a bit about the Olympics. If you have a small gymnast or sprinter or swimmer or cyclist on your hands (and what parent of a preschooler doesn’t?), taking in some of the Olympics together should be great fun. To make the most of your special journey all the way to China, see this article on watching the Olympics with children, and National Geographic Kids on Beijing's preparations for the Games. Also, do tell your small cheering section about the Mascots of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games: the Fish, the Panda, the Tibetan Antelope, and the Swallow -- some of China's most popular animals!

An Escape on a Sugar Cone! Let's Have Some Ice Cream!

Nothing says summer like a drippy, delicious ice cream cone.  Except maybe a drippy, delicious ice cream clutched in the mitts of your flush-cheeked preschooler! 

Consider it a newly declared national holiday -- go get an ice cream today!  Chocolate dipped, sprinkles, banana split, cup or cone.  Gelato, frozen custard, shaved ice, homemade, storebought.  Just go!

Looking for the absolute best ice cream parlors near you?  Being Savvy brings you the cream of the ice cream crop all over the continent!  Look for:

• Berkeley and Oakland
• Boston
• Charleston
• Chicago
• Columbus
• Denver
• Detroit
• Houston
• Minneapolis
• Los Angeles
• San Diego
• San Fernando Valley
• Seattle
• Silicon Valley
• Toronto
• Washington D.C.