Traveling with Children

This past weekend my wife and I embarked on a weekend getaway to attend a wedding. This was our first real test of traveling with both of our kids on the road without the luxury of a kitchen and house at our disposal.

In addition to our two checked bags we had two car seats in tow. This did not present as many challenges as I expected. There is often no charge for car seats and it is nice to have “our” car seats when at the car rental agency. The flight itself is always challenging even though we have 3 seats for 4 people. We got lucky both ways and were sitting together. The girls never sleep at the same time and having whole milk at the proper temperature in flight is a near impossibility. We will have to try room temperature evaporated milk on our next endeavor.

This trip also included a one hour drive from the airport to our hotel. This was courtesy of a PT Cruiser which was part of the economy line-up along with the Ford Focus. The car met our needs fine. At the hotel the antics began in terms of getting the girls dressed and fed. Sleep time was difficult as expected given that the girls were constantly waking each other up.

The children seemed to have a lot of fun and we had set the bar pretty low on being able to attend and enjoy all of the wedding festivities. In the future the only changes I am considering would be to bring a DVD player that we could hook up to the hotel television, try powdered milk and feed the girls full meals at regular intervals rather than depending on snacks to span the planned meals.

We did a pretty good job with the carryon baggage by having plenty of snacks, sippy cups and clothing changes which we thankfully did not need.

I was very surprised that even with the chaos I was able to slip out for a run and also spend a few hours at one of the local casinos.

As this was the test run for overseas travel, we may be waiting until the girls are a couple of years older before planning a trip abroad.