Spinning Plates: Travel Tips Edition!
Volume 2, Issue 10
The Saremzadeh-Cohen clan just wrapped up an international vacation to Turkey, which offered frequent and poignant reminders that travel with toddler is different from travel with a baby … which itself is not the same as traveling with a newborn, and none of which bears any resemblance whatsoever to the salad days of traveling childless.
For the uninitiated, forget about cramming all of your possessions into a carry-on LOL! As parents the conversation is something more like,
“Do you think we’ll have to pay weight overage fees for both of these giant suitcases?”
or
“Are we seriously packing two different life vests?”
Now that Azad has more than a dozen flights under her belt, including five international trips, we have a handful of go-to, low-cost travel hacks that have worked for us. I thought I’d share a few, in case they might work for you too:
Get a Lightweight Travel Car Seat & Check It in a Giant Duffel Bag
Someone in a local parents’ WhatsApp group was giving this car seat away, so we got it for free. It’s super lightweight, and if you buy one of these comically oversized duffel bags, it fits easily, with extra room. The extra room is key, as the airlines will check this bag for free; do yourself a favor and cram some extra stuff under that car seat … you’ll feel like you’re getting away with something.
You Can Manage without a Pack-and-Play
Travel cribs fold cheaply, and we have one we love … but we’ve found that it’s the thing we end up using least. If you’re staying in hotels, they almost always have cribs, and if you limit your AirBnB searches to family friendly lodgings, they will have sleep options as well. Plus, let’s keep it real … a lot of kiddos are sleeping between mommy and daddy in bed during vacation anyway. If you need to save space, ditch the foldable pack-and-play and only book places that offer cribs.
Buy Puffy, Reusable Stickers
These ended up being an absolute godsend. They are cheap, reusable, and take up almost no packing space. Toddlers can enjoy these for minutes - MINUTES! - at a time, and they’re cheap enough that you won’t feel badly when you spend the whole vacation slowly losing all of them.
Azad sleeping while her stickers occupy the in-flight screen Download Videos from Streaming Services
I bet I’m not the only incredibly old person who didn’t realize you can download videos temporarily from streaming services, but you can - and should - for toddler entertainment purposes. Do I love the fact that my child can sit in front of a screen and watch Ms. Rachel and Cocomelon episodes like a drugged zombie for three hours? No, no I do not. But has science discovered any other way to entertain a two-year-old for long stretches of international travel? Also no.
Casual viewing, featuring Bapi. Jockey for the Empty Middle Seat
Until your child is two-years-old, they still qualify as a lap child, which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you don’t have to buy them a whole ass expensive seat. On the other hand, their “free” seat is your human body. So, if you have the stomach for it, once you get to the airport, beg every airline employee to give you the row where there’s an empty middle seat. If the flight is full, this doesn’t work, duh, but most flights have some give, and literally nobody wants to be the third wheel in a row that includes a traveling toddler and their husk parents. Everyone wins when you get that free middle seat, but you have to be persistent and shameless in pursuit of this ephemeral holy grail of toddler traveldom.
To be totally honest, this was the first time in Azad’s life that I felt more excitement than anxiety about traveling with her. Flying with kids, especially internationally, is a mind-expanding privilege. It also can be remarkably stress-inducing. Like everything else parenting-related, though, you get better with practice, and the crippling apprehension lessens with each outing.
Do you have other travel hacks that Spinning Plates readers might like? Share in the comments below!
Great tip! (And pics!) And just bought the duffel bag!