The National Parks Conservation Association is reaching out to NYC parents to get our input on the redevelopment of Gateway National Park. Specifically they are holding a design competition for a new park at Floyd Bennett Field in Queens and have invited Mommy Poppins readers to vote.

This was a good month for Mommy Poppins. Our community grew a lot this month as more people are finding the site and we're seeing it in increased comments and contributions from readers. The water fun week definitely had some of our most popular posts and we got a lot of positive feedback on those articles as well as the Summer Guide and these others:

Top 5 Beaches Near NYC for a Family Daycation

For all you parents who are starting to think about sleepaway camp for next year, but have no idea how to choose the right one for your child, here's a great tip from from Mommy Poppins reader, Lauren:

I've actually been surprised at how hard it has been to find good resources for traveling with kids. As we were planning our family vacation for this summer, I was looking around online and found very few good sites for planning trips with kids. After scouring the web, here are the best resources I've found for traveling with kids:

When preparing for a long trip with kids, whether by car or airplane, there's always a moment of trepidation before leaving when you consider those long hours in transit and how your child will be possibly stay occupied, tear-and whine-free while on the go. It is always my instinct to go to the book or toy store and buy a travel kit or some other small toy. I find that the Klutz kits are always a hit and help pass the time nicely.

However, occasionally I stand there in the aisle and think to myself, "What happened to the books I got the last time?" And,"What's wrong with all the other toys and books my kids have stuffed into shelves that they barely look at?" And I realize that this exercise is really for me - to easy my anxiety about the trip with some consumer therapy.

So now I have a new routine before trips. Rather than heading to the bookstore, I go straight to the toy box or bookshelf. I dump the toy box upside down and dig out some small toys that my children haven't looked at in months - new to them! Pick some of the books of Super Silly Mad Libs Junior and Klutz books from some previous trip, and toss them in a small backpack. Et, Voila! A free travel kit filled with plenty of fun and games for the long haul.

And the truth is that the kids have just as much fun with this stuff as they would with new stuff. It just shows how much the needing to buy stuff for kids originates with the adults.

You may have seen or heard lately about a movie called The Holiday in which two women swap houses and end up swapping more than that. Or something, I haven’t actually seen it. But it has become part of the popular culture enough that now there is some frame of reference for house swapping so that when you talk about it people say, “Oh, like in that movie" rather than just staring at you like you're not wearing underwear.

When I was a teenager my family swapped our New York home for an apartment in Paris for a month one summer. Last Fall, I decided I wanted to take a particularly long vacation this year and so I thought of house swapping as a way to be able to take a longer vacation without having the expense of renting a house for a month. As usual frugality was my first motive, but as the experience has developed it has turned out to be just one of the benefits of traveling this way.

The whole ban on bringing water through airport security thing has been driving me mad. First of all, I think that they are not letting anyone bring water on airplanes because two idiots were thinking about trying to make gel bombs is just one of the worst examples of how we are letting the terrorists win.

In addition, I'm beginning to think that they are just keeping this rule around now because they realize how much money they can make by forcing everybody to buy $3 bottles of water now. You would think that airlines would take this opportunity to give out bottles of water on the plane, but no, now they STARTED charging for water on the plane. It's like, "yeah, we know we've got you over the barrel. Pay up!"

This is a pretty serious issue to me, not only for my own comfort, health and miserliness, but when traveling with kids we know how important it can be to have water on hand. I've actually seen them make a mother pour out the contents of a bottle. It's crazy. But, I finally figured out a solution.

Sorry about the late posting today. I’ve actually been offline since Saturday.( Yes, it’s been pretty traumatic.) I’ll be on vacation for the next three weeks, so posting may be light, but I’m planning on posting at least 3 times a week, if not more. But definitely stayed tuned, because there’s some good things in the works. We’ll have the second half of our summer guide coming with activities for every day of August.