Travel and toddlers....
2:56 PM
I intended to have this blog up sooner but between vacation hangover, internet issues, work and a toddler...well it got a little delayed! So first I want to assure you that more polishes are coming soon! You can check out my first impressions of the new Zoya collection on my YouTube channel and those will be swatched and up here for you as well very soon. It's a collection I'm super excited about so I can't wait to see what you all think. But for today I want to talk to you about another passion in my life; travel. I try to travel at least twice a year but typically I go somewhere every four months or so. Of course now that I have a daughter it's a little trickier to go places, but it's definitely not impossible and I hope that as we travel more she'll get used to it so it will continue to be pretty stress free. In future blogs I'd love to outline more of how we budget, save, and plan for travel since I know quite a few people who think that travel is out of their reach when it reality it may be more accessible than you think. It doesn't' have to be outrageously expensive and there are TONS of ways to save money and travel on almost any budget. Sometimes I go somewhere just because the price or deal is too great to skip out on and I've enjoyed everywhere we've been so far. Today this is just a quickie blog though, to give you some fast tips when traveling with a toddler! My daughter took her first flight at 9 months old and just recently returned from Maui, Hawaii which was her third trip with flights and probably her 12th or 13th actual flight. Her first flight she was pretty young and the flight was short; I think the longest one was about 4 hours so nothing too crazy. She slept through almost all of it and honestly, I think traveling with infants when they're really young like that is the easiest. She was still nursing and eating only a little solids so it was super easy to feed her and since the flights were short she didn't need a meal mid-flight. You can bring seats for infants and this is considered the safest way to travel but I never have brought a seat for her and I don't think she'd sit in it without a fuss even if I did. One thing I didn't know though, is that if your baby is under 1 and under 20lb you can actually book a bulkhead seat and request a bassinet. So that's something to think about if you have a really little one. Our last set of flights totaled 15 hours of time and a six hour time change. I thought she was going to be a mess but we did SO well. I learned a lot from her first two flights which I think made her last long journey A LOT easier. So here they are in no particular order:
Snacks!
Bring lots of snacks! Seriously. LOTS. Snacks are one thing that's so easy and that will surely keep your toddler busy and content. I brought way more snacks than I needed but better to have too many than not enough. Some great snack options are fruit (check your final destination to see if fresh fruits are OK. If you're travelling internationally, or you don't want to worry about a mess then take dried fruits instead!), pretzels, dry cereal, crackers, and a few cookies or sweets that they can eat if you really get desperate! I considered taking a cooler but decided against it since it can be a hassle with TSA but you can pack a cooler with yogurt and frozen cheeses or other cold treats if you like. Just be sure to use a frozen ice pack so you don't get held up at TSA! Juice boxes can also be carried through TSA but again, it can hold you up so I ended up purchasing some toddler formula packets and filled up her sippy with water at the fountains to mix them up as needed. Some airlines have milk but most don't so don't rely on it on board. You can always get juice though if you like!
Toys:
Toys are a given but most toddler toys have loud noises or lots of parts and that's a no go in a plane with a baby who's going to throw them everywhere. One toy my daughter loves that's TINY and super easy to take on the go is the Dimpl toy. She can play with it for hours and it's great for ages baby to 4 so it's one I hope will last. I also brought her a Fischer Price toy with lots of moving doors and windows and lights, a book we could read, and...go ahead and kill me now...an iPad. I loaded up the iPad with a few games, three episodes of Little Baby Bum, and Moana; her favorite movie. We watched the LLB for most of the flights and never used the other things. But it never hurts to have backup plans.
Other things I brought on board are her pacifier which we securely attached with a clip, a change of clothing, and then the obvious wipes and diapers. I really love this cloth wipe clutch because it clips onto her diaper bag, it's super soft (she used it filled with cloth wipes as a pillow at one point but disposables totally fit as well!), and it's so easy to just pull a wipe out on the fly! The main trick is to pack light but efficiently! Have you ever flown with a toddler? Any tips or tricks you have?
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