Beach With Baby–How to make the Most of Your Beach Vacation

While awaiting the birth of our second child, we decided to take another “babymoon”.  We spent our first babymoon in Hawaii.  The second time we chose another great beach vacation in Aruba.  We spent a great week relaxing on the beach at the Radisson Aruba which did its best to win our vote for best place to travel with toddlers.

Heading to the beach with baby this summer?  Here are some things we’d recommend to help make your beach vacation with kids truly a vacation!

Going to the beach with baby doesn’t have to mean the end of those long walks on the beach!  On the other hand, your toddler’s tender feet will probably thank you if you bring along some Water Shoes.  They are also great for walking on hot pavement around pools. 

For extra fun both on the beach and in the pool, we also brought along a Kidoozi Castle Bucket Set.  Sure, we could have just bought something at the beach, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as durable – or as fun!  The bucket, shovel and rake are great for sand, and the water mill and watering can are great fun in the pool.  In fact, well after our beach vacation was over, our toddler kept using these in her wading pool. 

We also brought along plenty of Huggies Little Swimmers Disposable Swimpants, since diapers are usually more expensive at beach vacation destinations.  We were glad we did.  It turned out diapers were much more expensive at the stores we checked, and they didn’t have the size we needed, either!

We loved having a Swimways Baby Spring Float Sun Canopy for our toddler in Aruba.  This great swim float has a mesh seat for baby to sit in.  It comes with an attached sunshade that can be tilted to the right angle.  You twist to fold it up, and it springs open- like those sunshades for cars.  It’s super compact size makes it very convenient for travel!  It was great not to have to hold her the whole time and we appreciated the sun coverage (especially that close to the equator).  She enjoyed playing with shells we stuck on the mesh in front of her.  She also roamed around in it in the (very) shallow part of the pool and we didn’t have to worry about her falling over.  The float is covered with fabric which we appreciated since we felt it wasn’t likely to puncture right away like so many inflatable beach toys for kids.  It is really compact and was easy to inflate.  Very worth it!  We actually saw lots of people with the adult version – Swimways Spring Float Assortment, and we wished we’d known about them, too!  

Travel with baby means you’ll want to have snacks and milk available.  We brought a very small, Insulated Thermal Cooler Bag with us.  This lightweight cooler was compact and easy to travel with.  Every morning, we’d stick a bunch of (adult) drinks and a sippy cup with milk in it along with some ice and bring it down to the pool or beach with us.  It was much cheaper than buying drinks all the time and very convenient for having milk for our toddler.

Even if you’re spending your day relaxing on the beach baby will still need to nap.  Luckily, we were able to get a palapa to shade us.  If we hadn’t, it was great to know we could easily use our Phil & Teds Traveller (Travel Cot) to keep our toddler shaded while she slept.  While she played, her Sunday Afternoons Kids Play Hat, with its SPF 50, kept her face well shaded.  (We’ve been in love with that hat ever since friends gave it to us when our daughter was still a baby.  With it’s great elastic at the back, it still fits!  In fact, we first wrote about it in our list of Top 10 Items to make Travel with Baby Easy and Fun).

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Heading to the beach with baby this summer?  What are you planning to bring?  Already took a beach vacation with kids?  What did you bring along to help make the trip truly a vacation?