Traveling with a Toddler - Tips Wanted!
This morning I woke up at 4:45 with a slight panic about not being prepared for our trip to Australia with Jack. I somehow managed to fall back asleep instead of immediately grabbing my phone to research traveling with a toddler. I felt refreshed when I woke up at 6:30 to begin my morning. I don't like to have things linger anymore - especially not in my head. So I took some modern mom action by posting a photo on Instagram.
The caption reads: Hey everyone - we need your help! Next week we will be taking Jack on his first international flight to Australia. It's exciting and we are hoping for the best, but I'd love to get some tips from you about traveling with a 1.5 year old for a 15 hour flight. Also any advice (insider/local tips) for must do's while in Sydney would be greatly appreciated!
And the comments that have come in since have been wonderful! These are some of my favorites so far:
roxaneapple My mom started the Traveling Angel idea with us and I continued it with my children. When boredom hits a surprise little present arrives. One idea is a set of farm animals. Give him a few at a time to create a farm and a bag to contain them could be a present too. If you give other small items in between it makes the animals exciting again.
jamiewaters Lots of socks and other items that he will turn into gloves lol
jlsimmons A few new things he's never played with and a few favorites. Beyond that - Stickers - you have plenty of those, right 😉 oh, and I saw someone make a toy out of a pill case - putting small items in different compartments and then rearranging. I thought that was interesting.
debrajefferson Aside from the iPad :) Die cut some fun shapes in felt - animals, circles, backgrounds, alphabets, etc. bring one full piece to lay things out on during flight & you can make up stories together. It all fits in one zip lock, is flat & light so you aren't lugging tons of extras.
tristahertz Putting crumpled up magazine pages in and out of the barf bag occupied my little guy for a long time on one of our trips. Best of luck!
I plan on compiling a blog post with a list of the tips we used and what worked for us after we complete the journey. If there's anything else you would like to add, please do so in the comments!
