Win my copy of Shelly Rivoli’s Travels with Baby

Even though it has been a few years since my kids were babies and toddlers, I have no problem remembering what a challenge it was to take them on family road trips, or to travel on airplanes while lugging a diaper bag, car seat, Cheerios dispenser and those squirty juice boxes.

If my Mom memory fails me, I can get right back up to speed with Shelly Rivoli’s excellent book, Travels with Baby: The Ultimate Guide for Planning Trips with Babies, Toddlers, and Preschool-Age Children.

The San Francisco Bay Area-based Ms. Rivoli is an experienced traveler and mother of three (welcome to her new baby Theo, born this month!) She’s active on Twitter and also blogs about her latest thoughts and advice on travel with young ones.

Here are some highlights from Shelly’s book:

*** Detailed pre-trip planning tips, including “Fifteen Things You Might Not Think to Pack” (yes, an inflatable beach ball is a total what-to-play-with lifesaver!)

*** Honest feedback about the relative ease of traveling with infants, who mostly just want to be carried and nursed, and have a clean diaper on their bottom. With a good carrier, you are free to walk around and do adult-ish things like shopping while baby snoozes, or those curious little eyes peek out from the sling to take in the sights. In a few short months, they will be running all around getting into things, and the infant days will seem like a piece of cake.

*** Lots of helpful guidance about international travel, including food and water safety, vaccinations and “bringing the ugly Winnie the Pooh diaper bag” so that its contents are obvious and it’s less likely to be swiped. On Shelly’s blog, one of her latest entries is about flying to India with a 2-year-old. I like her sense of adventure.

*** She has a whole chapter on taking a cruise with young children; which seems like a no-brainer good idea but can have a number of unexpected pitfalls, as Condé Nast Traveler‘s Wendy Perrin will tell you.  I also like Shelly’s extensive section on train travel (such as it is in the US.)

If all this sounds like your kind of book, here’s what to do to win my copy:

***  Leave a brief comment below about why you’d like to read “Travels with Baby”.

***  At the end of this week, on Friday, March 27, 2009, I will randomly pick one of your comments using one of the cool tools on Random.org, then I’ll announce the winner in a separate post.

***  If you win, I’ll email you at the address you leave when you comment (to get your snail mail address,) then I’ll box up the book and send it to you. Yes, I’ll mail to places outside the US.

Thanks for participating, and thanks very much to Shelly for sending me a review copy.

Good luck!