Putting lip balm on a toddler is like slipping a harness over the biggest pig in the pen and getting him to pull the portable pump back to The Man With The Yellow Hat's House so you can get the water out of his study; it seems easy enough, but it always leads to trouble.
For the kid, it's always too tempting to turn the regular Chapstik-style lip balm until it pops out. [What's worse, it's actually my wife's Kiehl's, so it cost, I don't know, $100 or something instead of $1.39.] My lip balm is no good, either. It comes in these tiny little toothpaste-like tubes that you squeeze onto your fingertip. There is no going back in. [Yeah yeah, it's Prada, so sue me. It's the only Prada thing I'll ever buy anymore.]
So obviously, the real problem here was finding a lip balm that could survive the "all by myself!" application situation. Because especially during the winter and on the road, the kid's lips and chin and cheeks were in serious need of balming. The solution: the Mustela Bebe Hydra-Stick.
Mustela's got a ton of moisturizing and hypoallergenic baby skin products, most of which blur together on the higher shelves of the bigger Madison Avenue pharmacies. The Hydra-Stick has cold cream and some other oils and such in it. Best of all, it's shape--like a travel-sized deodorant stick--is just the right size for a tiny hand, and it's wide enough that the kid can't really miss. And it works and feels great, too [yes, we've used it ourselves.]
Drugstore.com has the Mustela Hydra-Stick for $9, of which DT gets like 50 freakin' cents, but Dreamtime Baby sells it for $8. Mustela also makes a 20spf sunscreen in the same stick format, which might make sense at a park, but not on a beach.
This stuff is great, and not just for lips. Cheeks can get chapped too. And chins, especially if you like to chew on the strap for your hat.
They make a sunscreen in the same great format.
Greg, just make sure the kid never discovers the travel deoderant aisle at the local CVS. then she's smell like "cool breeze" and that'd be no fun.
Johnson and Johnson makes a similar balm stick in their "soothing naturals" line. It's cheap ($5), very portable, smells nice, and the kid likes to smear it on liberally.