Toddler Travel Tips

I keep forgetting to post on this topic. I am sure many of you have traveled with babies and toddlers. Traveling on extended, international trips with a toddler is challenging but having a toddler should not deter you from traveling. Here are some tips that I can share from our experience.

• Try your best to book your flight around when your toddler usually sleeps. On international flights this is somewhat easy since it takes so long to get from point A to B and chances are that the toddler will sleep for some of that time. Try not to be clearing customs when they usually sleep.
• Of course planes get delayed and connections are missed so the best schedules can get messed up.
• Take plenty of food for your toddler. This is especially important on travel days as kids usually do not like airplane food. Hey, I don't really like it either.
• We learned to take several cans of veggies and a can opener on weekend trips because sometimes it is hard to find a grocery store and they have much shorter hours in Europe than we are used to in the US.
• If possible, stay in an apartment rather than a hotel. You can either rent from a family, through a service or through a corporate apartment chain. This was a life saver for us because when Katherine went to sleep we could watch TV or read without keeping her up.
• Plan to travel at a much slower pace than you are used to. We would try to see one sight before lunch and one, maybe two sights after. I learned that having an itinerary with more that that just left me frustrated.
• Plan for naps. If you are lucky, your toddler will nap in a stroller and you can continue to see things while they are napping.
• Have more than one mode to carry your toddler. They get tired of the stroller so move them to the back pack. They will want to walk and it will frustrate you.
• Find kid-friendly sights or parks. I normally would not have seen the Pippi Longstocking museum in Stockholm or stopped to visit three playgrounds in Helsinki but for the sanity of all of us, those things were required. You cannot expect a toddler to go all day without some play time.
• Realize that most rules at home are bent while traveling. This means that your toddler who normally eats mostly organic food will eat french fries and pizza. It makes it hard to discipline. Pick your battles.
• Find a meaningful souvenir for your toddler. For us we have chosen to buy books about the destination.
• Jet lag is a killer. I recommend trips of at least 2 weeks with a toddler. I have heard that it takes about one day for every hour of time change to adjust and I would say that was pretty accurate for us. It was a 7 hour difference and it took a week for Katherine to get on schedule.
• Be flexible and be patient! This is probably the most important tip. There will be meltdowns. Flights will change. They will get hungry in the middle of a museum. There will be diaper disasters. Just remember, you will never see any of these people again.
• Take a ton of pictures. Katherine will not remember a single bit of this great Scandinavian adventure but she will have a lot of pictures to prove where she has been.