Toddling Across the Pacific
This week, our family is heading off on a trip to Malaysia and Singapore, to celebrate Toby's great-grandma's 90th birthday! It's not our first trip across an ocean, but it is our first time heading West from Oahu. And a three-week international trip is a different beast than a week with family. Looking forward to a blur of a November!
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It feels like I should be able to talk about traveling with a baby like an old pro, given that Toby has already made three trips to the continental U.S., and another island hop over to Maui. But even with that practice, going back-to-back on a 9-hour flight and then an 8-hour flight is pretty intimidating.
There's no shortage of tips and advice for traveling with kids out there, but nobody can tell you how your specific kid is going to handle the experience. I'm just gonna write some things about how it has gone for us so far.
Packing
When it comes to tracking a complex task, there's no one better than Szuyin. We have a Google spreadsheet filled with rows of items (diapers, clothes, snacks, documents, toys, books, wipes, etc, etc), and columns of which bag(s) it's going in, how many we have spread across all the bags, and whether the thing is actually packed. I can clean up a copy of this spreadsheet and share it with anyone who is interested.
Side note: It's truly impressive how natural it is for Szuyin to extend her brain into a doc, and make it collaborative. I don't know how people survive without Szuyin organizing things for them.
The hardest part of this, for me, is that we can't pack some things in advance. Even when she's napping, Toby's using a few things we want to bring with us (her monitor, her stuffed cat: essentials). So there's always a little last-minute scramble to tick off the final things on the list.
Flying
Toby has a way of charming people that makes them tell us she was "such a good traveler!" but it's very hard for me to believe they aren't a little annoyed with the noise. I don't want my kiddo impacting everybody else's trip, so it's nice when people relieve my social anxiety by adoring her.
Most of our departure flights have been red-eyes, which are not fun. Toby has never been interested in contact-sleep, so with her as a lap child, it's a pretty restless night for the three of us.
She'll have her own seat on this journey, and we'll strap in her car seat for a nice little recline and a canopy to block some of the distracting lights. Hopefully things go better in the sleep department this time.
On her previous daytime flights, we've mostly kept her entertained with food and the opportunity to look around the cabin. Those were all before she was walking, so I have no idea how long we'll be able to keep her in our row without yelling. This time, we're coming equipped with a book of stickers and some blank papers. Our plan is to hold strong and resist pacifying her with screen time. And if we don't download any kids content ahead of time, we'll kinda force ourselves to stick to our guns.
Lodging
After arrival, naps become the biggest hurdle for us when we're away from home. It'll be nice now that she's down to just one nap. Our commitment to that schedule has limited our options for daily activities, though. Our days are made up of two five-hour blocks of outings, and then at least one person will have to stay in with her for naps and the first hours of bedtime. We've had to say no to some cool activities that wouldn't have conformed to that routine.
Transition from place to place is tricky, too. Most hotels ask you to check out before noon, and don't let you check in before 3pm. Which is exactly when Toby takes her nap. And there has only been one hotel that actually set up a pack-and-play in the room for us ahead of check-in. So, even if we get keys to the room, we can't often get her to sleep right away.
The three of us also don't thrive when we are sleeping in the same room. Residence Inn has been our go-to hotel - we get a door to separate us and Toby at night, and also a full fridge and a good sink for doing dishes.
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The next time you hear from me, I'll hopefully be full of great stories from our trip!