3 tips for enjoying the chaos of traveling with two under two
We travel. A lot. Through a comedy of errors, we’ve actually been homeless (nomadic? You choose) since May of 2018 when we sold our house, thinking our next house would be ready soon. You would think that working in the home renovation space we would know that projects always, always take longer than expected. But hey… optimism is a good thing?
So here we are, October of 2019, and we’re still waiting to move into our new house. In the last year and a half, we have:
Lived in 11 different houses across 6 cities
Visited four other countries
Had baby #2 in the middle of it all
All that to say I’ve gotten really, really good at traveling, both pregnant and with little kids. I’m not going to lie – in the beginning it was hard, and I was frustrated. Imagine being 8 months pregnant and your nesting instinct kicks into high gear, but you feel like you have NO PERMANENT PLACE TO NEST. Whoa, mama. I feel bad for anyone who was in the house that day! But now when people ask me “isn’t that hard?” or “how in the world can you do that?!” I genuinely tell them it’s been a wonderful adventure.
#1. It starts with mindset. If you think it’s going to be frustrating, if you think it’s going to be hard, if you think it’s going to be awful: it will be. BUT, if you say to yourself “this is going to be such a fantastic adventure! We’re going to have such a blast!” and you say that over and over to yourself, well guess what. That’s what will happen!! (This concept is related to a lot of the recent research you might see on neural pathways and what it takes to change habit. I’m not a scientist, and this isn’t a science blog, but contact me if you want to have a deeper, science-y conversation.)
#2. It may start with mindset, but having the right gear helps. Think of it this way, if you climbed Mt. Everest, you wouldn’t just use your work bag and your gym sneakers. You need the right gear, mama! This will be different for every person, but I’ll share some things that have worked well for me in a future post (sign up here to get that delivered right to you!).
#3 Don’t wait. The younger your kids are, honestly, the easier this will be in the long run. For two reasons: first, traveling with an infant is EASY PEASY compared to a toddler. Second, your kids will get used to it. My two-and-a-half year-old daughter is an incredible traveler (seriously, the fight attendants are always amazed). Maybe we just got lucky, but I think it’s because she’s so familiar with the travel routine that it doesn’t feel foreign or scary to her.
Have we had tough moments in our travels? Oh, yes we have. On the red-eye flight to visit friends overseas our daughter, then 18 months, DID NOT SLEEP A WINK. Which meant that my husband and I DID NOT SLEEP A WINK. But we took that as a lesson – either don’t take red eye flights, or don’t plan anything for the first 24 hours you land so you and your husband can take turns catching some shut eye. Every tough moment has taught us something that has made the next trip that much easier. Don’t worry, mama, I’ll be sharing all those lessons (along with the hilariously painful, laugh out loud stories that got us there). Stay tuned!