Now that it's summer

You know how sometimes you can miss the most obvious solutions? Recently, while giving Lola her daily application of sunscreen, I got some in her eyes. I tried wiping it off with a wet towel, applying eye drops (next to impossible on a squirmy two year old), etc. I couldn't convince her to stop rubbing her hands, which already had sunscreen on them, into her eyes, so she kept making it worse, and it took a couple of hours before her eyes felt normal. I felt awful! After this incident, I started devising ways of applying sunscreen to a tiny, rapidly-moving face, including using a foundation brush (since it doesn't absorb the product, and I could pretend I was applying makeup to her face, which she'd love), or using a towelette, etc. Then a couple of days later, I saw my sister applying sunscreen to her toddler's face, but she used one of those solid sunscreen sticks. Hello??? Why hadn't I thought of that? The thing is - I sort of had - but I'd forgotten again, and for the past year or so I had been doing it the hard way. A toddler's tiny face is so hard to navigate with a conventional cream - a stick just makes sense! Here are other sunsmart ideas that can make your life a whole lot easier!

1. Invest in some UPF50 clothing for yourself and your little ones. Look for styles from Coolibar, Gymboree, Sea Folly, One Step Ahead, and Land's End.

2. Swap your regular daytime body lotion for a sunscreen (they all contain moisturizers) or a body lotion with sunscreen, like Lubriderm Daily Moisture Lotion with SPF15.

3. Swap your regular hand lotion for a sunscreen, and keep a tube in the car.

4. Sunscreen towelettes are expensive, come in small quantities and are really hard to find! Make your own. I bought a package of baby wipes (you can use generics for this if you want to), let them dry out, and then poured a bottle of liquid baby sunscreen (the kind in the pump spray bottle, not the aerosol, obviously) into the wipes container. The wipes absorbed the sunscreen and I had easy to apply sunscreen towelettes. (You might need more than one bottle of sunscreen depending on the quantity of wipes.) You can even stick a couple in a Ziploc bag or small wipes case and keep it in your diaper bag.

5. Invest in great sunglasses and a hat with a UPF factor. They're everywhere now. I bought a sun hat for Lola from Gymboree, and one for myself from the Luminescence Catalog. It's glamorous and practical. Can't beat that!