Travel Strike!

As most of my family now know, I am officially on Travel Strike. As someone who is “half Austrian”, this doesn’t bode well – I have lots of family and friends in Austria, as well as in other European countries (France, Germany, Spain). So why, now that I have two adorable (yes yes I am bias) children, am I to ”withhold them” from said friends and family?

 Well… the last trip we went on, Red Ted was 18 months and I was about 4-5 months pregnant. All I can say is, it was not fun. The trip was only for 5 days and it felt as if we spent two of them travelling.

The flight was packed. And we were jammed into the window seat and middle seat. Red Ted was at the “exploring” age and just didn’t want to sit still. Lots of wriggling and constantly having to ask he passenger in the isle seat to get up. Add to this, that it was supposed to be nap time and we had a very tired, but active boy on our hands. Luckily he didn’t scream (too much) when we had to wrestle him down for take off.

Worst part: all the wriggling meant that his nappy “moved”. Which meant that when Red Ted did a MASSIVE Nr 2, it didn’t stay in said nappy, but went all over The Englishman and his seat. Funny for me. Not funny for him. Thank goodness for babywipes!

So. Top tips?

- travel when they are <1yrs old – they are usually v good and sleep

- if they are older and you can, pay for the extra seat, it is worth it

- if you can’t, make sure you get an isle seat – then they can have a run/ crawl around

- take LOTS of extra baby wipes

- long flights: make sure you take lots of water for them – they don’t always give you enough

- pack plastic cutlery (I accidently took a small metallic baby fork – but was VERY lucky that the security man let me keep it)

- take one food bag and one toy/ book bag – if they are all in the same bag it gets horribly jumbled up and things get squashed and spillt as toddler tries to constantly go in and play

- my iphone as Apps suitable for toddlers – BRILLIANT entertainment for 30-40 min – you can download loads of reasonably good free ones. If you haven’t got an iphone – maybe get a toddler laptop??? we love books, but Red Ted soon lost interest in the new ones

- avoid “short” trips – do longer ones, so that you get to feel that the “hassle” is worth it

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