10 Toddler Vacation Tips

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.

Check out kid services at other hotels. Just because you're staying in one hotel doesn't mean that you can't visit another - especially if the other hotel has kids' offerings. Do some Googling or talk to your travel agent to check out competing hotels' programs; for example, in Grand Cayman, we stayed at one resort, but headed to the Ritz-Carlton for their spectacular marine adventure program "Ambassadors of the Environment," designed by Jean-Michel Cousteau. Offerings were divided into little kids' and big kids' categories, and included night snorkeling, expeditions to a breeding ground for endangered blue iguanas, and underwater photography with digital photo editing session. All of the programs were offered in an eco-friendly cottage, the Ambassadors Heritage House, on the hotel property. (The Ambassadors of the Environment at the Ritz-Carlton is unique to the Grand Cayman, but there are other Ambassadors programs for kids around the world through Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society; more info here.)

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...



To read the rest of the tips, go to Babble!