Traveling with a Toddler

Growing up I spent many summers in Hawaii and have always wanted to take my own family there with me. But of course, I would never think about all the details that go into traveling with a family, let alone taking your toddler with you and what all they have to bring with them. Why is there so much “stuff” that has to go with a traveling toddler?

Before traveling I didn’t want to go on this trip without looking into what exactly we should be taking and what things we would actually need. There is a huge difference between the things you need on vacation and the things you want to take on vacation. Lets talk about those shall we?

Stroller: This was one of the hardest things for me to decide on. We own a B.O.B. which I felt would be great because I would take my son fun runs in the morning, it would be great on the beaches, and can carry towels, beach toys, or any other stuff we’d need at the beach. The problem with the B.O.B. is that is basically would be like carrying another piece of luggage, and believe me, we don’t pack light. We also own a Baby Jogger City Select which I have heard from plenty of people is great for traveling. Can also hold tons of things to take to the beach and push easily on the sand. It just is hard to carry that around with four suitcases, a carseat, and a baby. We decided to keep it simple and just take our light weight umbrella stroller that was cheap and we were fine if something were to happen to it. I feel like that really is the way to go when traveling far. Just pack a light stroller and take it everywhere. Honestly I was surprised how little we used it but was grateful not to have another big thing to haul around.

Clothes: Whatever you do, DO NOT pack every single cute outfit that you have for your child. We really thought that he was going to wear three outfits a day and that never happened once. We over packed on his clothes, because that is what we do ourselves when packing for a trip. You really need to pack light and just realize that you’ll have plenty and depending how long you have there and if you have the opportunity to wash your clothes, you may be able to do that too and let’s be honest we always buy something new too.

The Flight: When you are flying to a place that isn’t close, do all that you can to get your child in a carseat. When we flew over we were fortunate enough to have plenty of extra seats that we were able to bring our carseat and he was able to sleep soundly, be comfortable the whole time, and freed up our arms from having to hold him. But the flight home was a different story. The plane was packed full and we sat by the window (just the two of us holding him) and I felt like this flight freaked me out more. The couple in front of us thought that their seats were rocking chairs. Their recline was broken, but that wasn’t about to stop the huge guy in front of us. He kept jamming his seat back and our son had fallen asleep and was laying on the snack trays. All I kept thinking was that if he wakes up my child I will freak out on them. So really, before you take off go up to the counter and ask if they will help you out. The workers on the flight will do all that they can to help you because they don’t want a screaming child just as much as you. And side note, if your child sleeps on the plane, just put down your tray tables and lay them across that. He slept great on there and we were hands free.

Stuff: When getting all our stuff ready to go I thought about the hikes we would go on and how we wanted to take a hiking backpack. Then you think, where are they going to sleep? Maybe I should take a pack and play for him to sleep in? It really just kept adding up, all the things that we would be needing. Well, if you look into it, you can usually rent the things you need from a local place. We were fortunate enough to get a place that we rented a pack and play, high chair, and hiking backpack. It saved us so much stress from having to take all our own stuff and trying to get it to the island. The places we used were great and dropped off and picked up the supplies right at our door.

The moral of the story is, figure out what exactly you need to pack and really think long and hard about it. You don’t want to take too much and you don’t want to be missing anything. You just want to relax and enjoy your vacation. We learned a lot this trip and won’t ever make some of our same mistakes again.