A few thoughts on traveling with small kids.
Our recent travels to California and back provided me ample experiences for traveling with an almost 5 year old, a 2 year old, and an infant. We drove instead of flying, but I think most of my thoughts would still apply. (I am once again posting something that may only be truly beneficial to Dan and Cathy, but something might spark a thought for you travelers without small children.)
Thought 1: Unseen Toys. Have a variety of new toys on hand BUT save them
to dole out one at a time. We have our traveling toys that only come out for road trips, but my fatal error this time was putting several of them in a box between their car seats and letting them go at it. It only bought us about 30 minutes before they’d looked at everything and dropped it all on the floor. On the way home, I gave them something new at each rest stop and this worked much better. They played with the new item much longer because they weren’t swamped with all this new stuff. I did like that I saved some new toys that they didn’t see at all until we were traveling home. One of the favorite travel toys is a dollar store cookie sheet and some magnets.
Thought 2: Snack, snacks and more snacks. My boys are fruit snack eaters (they prefer Betty Crocker brand–they are fruit snack snobs) and we rarely leave the house without a few packs on hand. They work great for preventing meltdowns. Other successful snacks for us are gold fish crackers, granola bars (Chewy Quaker ones, thank you very much), and Smarties. Those are all fairly un-messy and easy to travel with snacks. Note to self - always have snacks on hand!Thought 3: A medium sized bag. I don’t really like carrying a big bag around, but I’ve learned that with the 3 boys, I’m going to need something. We did Disneyland with a backpack that looks
big,
but 1/3 of it is actually cooler space that held our lunches. It held a change of pants for each of the older boys and a full outfit for Rusty, diapers for the two younger ones, snacks, sun screen, a small first aid kit, baby wipes, extra pacifier, gum, hand sanitizer, a nursing cover, a couple water bottles, and long sleeved shirts for the boys. Did I mention snacks? It held those too. And snacks, can’t forget those. The change of pants was nice but, thankfully, unnecessary on this trip. A boy with a dirty shirt is to be expected. An accident though and you’ve got naked bum issues. There was extra room to toss in their hats if they didn’t want to wear them. Kevin got to wear the backpack. I had a small bag for my own wallet, the camera, chap stick and such. All of that could have fit in the backpack, if we’d wanted to. Embarrassingly, my bag was a fanny pack. I know - the shame. But it was nice to have my hands free for chasing Billy, I didn’t have to take it off for any of the rides, and I could wear it and the baby carrier at the same time very comfortably. I liked having my wallet on me like that, but I don’t know that my bag was necessary.Thought 4: Down time. We had the ability to go back to the hotel every afternoon
and let the boys sleep. It made everything about our trip so much nicer. They are used to the downtime at home. We had very few tantrums or meltdowns and I think it was because they did get this time to relax each day. We also had a few toys that they could play with in the room. They didn’t need a lot, but a few of their favorites to occupy them. With the kids club on the cruise, they should get the interaction and activity time, but I still think down time will be good for them (and me).Thought 5: Packing. I will have to pack diapers and baby food, so I am planning to do laundry on the cruise to cut down on the clothing I will need to bring. With the formal night and wanting to dress up a bit for dinner, I will have oodles of clothes (and shoes, let us not forget the shoes) no matter what, but I do have a way to keep things organized a bit better. I found these “packing cubes” last year before we went to Seattle and I love them! I don’t know if they make
a big difference for a single traveler and the 2 gallon Ziploc bags could accomplish much the same thing, but for me these are fabulous! I have several (I got a great deal on them from ebags.com) and these are some of the ways I’ve used them: one for Kevin’s and one for my underwear, one for our swimwear, one for each of the boys’ clothes, one for all of our pjs, one for diapers, one for pants, one for shirts, etc. The possibilities are endless. A really nice thing about them is how easy it is to unpack at the hotel - just open the drawer, drop the cube in, close the drawer. On our cruise last October, there were no drawers, just open shelves behind a closet door. I loved having these then - our clothes stayed together very neatly on the shelves.Thought 6: Food. Know what they like and have it available. We saved ourselves a bunch of money at
Disneyland by knowing that our kids don’t like chicken nuggets at all and aren’t really keen on burgers. They do, however, like bologna sandwiches. Since finding something for kids other than nuggets and burgers was hard in the Magic Kingdom, we bought bread, bologna, and cheese and just carried in sandwiches for the boys each day. They were happy, we were happy, and there were no tears and pleas of “I don’t want that!” On our cruise I saw no bologna sandwiches in the dining room or at the buffets, but I bet room service could at least hook us up with a plain old cheese sandwich (I did really like room service).Thought 7: Tips. We ate at a few restaurants and had the bell hop (is that what they are called) do our luggage and so we had some tips to hand out. It is fun to use $2 bills. Sometimes you
get the look of “this isn’t real money” and sometimes “wow a $2.” We used $2 on our cruise and it was better for Kevin (who carried all the money) because his wallet was thinner - when we got two drinks, he could just pass along a two, rather than two $1.Well, those are some of my thoughts. They are out there now and hopefully easier for me to remember. We are down to 5 months and my family will most likely take at least one more short trip before then. Next on the “Get Ready for the Cruise” list, passports for me and the boys!
