Ever come back from a family vacation and feel like you need a
vacation? You’re not alone. Traveling with an infant or toddler can
feel like an endurance test rather than a relaxing interlude. The
good news: traveling with toddlers doesn’t have to be grueling when
you incorporate these ten vacation sanity-savers.
Fill up the iPhone or iPod with family photos and videos.
If you have an iPhone, it’s probably already loaded up with kid-friendly apps like MyFirstABC, Poppin', Doodle Kids, Scribble, and KidArt. When your little one tires of doodling or popping bubble wrap bubbles, pull out the big guns: family photos. I've yet to meet a toddler who doesn't love going through the family digital photo archive. It's a chance to tell stories, reflect on the past, and remember the good times your family has had. In other words: a perfect way to begin a family vacation! When you tire of explaining who's who in every photo, it's time to move on to home movies of your child. Unrepentant narcissists that they are, toddlers looooove seeing movies of themselves and people they know. The other day, I put on a video of my son's preschool class singing "Happy Birthday" and set it to repeat. My son would have been happy to watch it all day; I cut him off when I couldn't stand to listen to it anymore. Now, we save the Happy Birthday video for traveling. I plan to take that video with us on every plane ride until he's in college. Headphones, too. Speaking of which...
Bring DVDs and headphones for the grown-ups, too. There’s a special kind of vacation heck I discovered the first time my husband and I traveled with our baby. He went to bed at 7:00 PM, and we were… stuck in the room. We couldn’t turn on the TV, lest we wake him up. But you probably already travel with a portable DVD player and kid DVDs, right? Make sure your player has two headphone jacks (or get a splitter) so that you can watch movies together in the hotel room after the baby goes down for the night. It’s not plasma TV with surround sound, but it’s better than trying to read in the dark. And it’s certainly better than my most desperate bored-in-the-hotel moment, when I put a pillow in the bathtub so I could stretch out and read a magazine while my baby was sleeping in the darkened hotel room. An empty bathtub is surprisingly cold. Another option...
Get a suite. Suites aren’t just for VIPs; they’re also for parents who want to have a conversation with each other while their children are sleeping in the other room. Ask to reserve a suite, or consider vacationing at a suite hotel. My family is partial to the warm chocolate chip cookies offered daily at the Doubletree Guest Suites chain (fun fact: the Doubletree gives out 29,000 of these a day). Another bonus: suites generally have two TVs, so nobody needs to fight over the remote.
Find a local sitter. Good help can be easy to find on vacation. The Vacation Kids travel agency offers a listing of major-label resorts that can accommodate families with kids or babies. If you don’t go to a family resort, ask the concierge at your hotel — or the concierge at a nearby major hotel — about babysitting options. Most will refer you to a local nanny or caregiver service. It’s not the kid down the street, but when you hire a nanny from an agency, you know you’re getting someone insured, experienced, and capable of dealing with emergencies. And you can actually get out of the hotel and go to dinner. A few hours’ break from the kids will go a long way toward enjoying the vacation!
To read the rest of the tips, go to Babble!
