Sleeping arrangements on the road

Noob sleeping in a hotel-provided crib, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (9 months old)

Ahhhh, sleep. An ongoing challenge for most parents of small children, even at home. Throw traveling into the mix, and nighttime (and naptime!) can become a downright disaster.

When traveling, there is only so much you can do about jetlag, missed naptimes/bedtimes, overactivity leading to overtiredness, and other kid-sleep-busters. But at least you can try to plan an environment that is as conducive to good sleep as possible.

Where to stay?
When traveling, we try to find places to stay that have multiple rooms, so that Hubby and I can stay up in one room while the kids sleep in another room. We've stayed in 1- or 2-bedroom suites at a variety of Residence Inns for this reason. We've also found places like the Douglas Fir Resort during our visit to Banff National Park, where we had a lovely condo with a separate bedroom. We put Littles to sleep in the bedroom and then hung out in the living room until we were ready for bed. As a bonus, many of these places also have a kitchenette, so we can cook meals at "home," rather than having to drag the kids out to eat at restaurants every night.

If we can't find a reasonably-priced suite-style hotel at our destination, we can make it work in a regular hotel room, too. It often means falling asleep when the kids do, but when you're on vacation, having an excuse to go to sleep early isn't always a bad thing :)

What to sleep in?
That depends on age. We have an Eddie Bauer infant travel bed that we've used with both kids up until about 6 months of age. I love it and I've been so sad when they've each outgrown it. It is lightweight, it folds up very small, and it provides easy access to a floppy newborn. Just be aware that the sides are relatively low, so it won't contain a crawling baby.

So, with mobile kids, we usually request a crib from the hotel. Hotel cribs get a bad rap, but in many many hotel nights, we've never had a bad/unsafe one. I do try to remember to bring a sheet from home, as some hotels will simply wrap a full-size sheet around the crib mattress, which isn't very safe for young infants.

I should also note that most hotels have provided a pack-n-play style crib, not a "normal" crib like the one you see in the picture at the top of this post. I don't think pack-n-plays can be fully sanitized, but honestly, it doesn't bother me, and we've never had a problem with it. If you're a germophobe, you might want to call ahead to see if your hotel does use pack-n-plays, and plan alternate arrangements if they do.

On occasion, we've stayed at hotels that don't provide cribs at all (such as the Old Faithful Lodge Cabins in Yellowstone National Park), or we've taken trips where we stay with family or friends who don't have cribs. For the Yellowstone trip, we actually lugged our own pack-n-play from home. I don't recommend that when flying :) Pack-n-plays are huge and bulky and generally a pain to fly with. (They're not too bad when driving, though. As I've previously noted, we usually do bring it on road trips.)

In fact, with airline baggage fees being what they are these days, you might find it is no more expensive to purchase a cheap pack-n-play at your destination and leave it there. That saves you the hassle of lugging the pack-n-play around, and if you're visiting someone who you might visit again in the future, you can leave the pack-n-play with them so that you have it for your next visit.

Of course, if you travel frequently like we do, spending $50 multiple times per year to fly with a pack-n-play or purchase a new one at your destination just isn't feasible. So we now have a Kidco Peapod, which is fabulous! It's a little pop-up tent that folds up small enough to fit easily in a suitcase.

 
Noob in the Peapod (with a few other accessories :), camping on the Guadalupe River near New Braunfels, Texas (4 months old). Here, he was using the Peapod as a playpen, but he also slept in it for naps/nighttime on this trip.

Besides its size, another huge advantage that it has over a pack-n-play is that the child can be zipped inside. So if you have a child who can climb out of a pack-n-play, the Peapod is a great option to keep him/her contained. In fact, Littles used the Peapod daily at her sitter's house once she started climbing out of her pack-n-play (at 19 months old).

We have the Peapod P101 model, and Littles fit in it until about 2.5 years of age, although it was definitely a tight fit towards the end. If you have a larger child or just want to get more use out of it, you might look into the Peapod Plus, which is a little bigger.

Littles now sleeps in the "big bed" when we stay in hotels. We make sure to get a room that either has two beds or one bed plus a pull-out couch. I will say, getting her to actually sleep in the big bed is usually a challenge. Too bad our suitcases are usually jam-packed with the stuff we need for all of us, or I would seriously consider getting a Peapod Plus for her to use...

Littles sleeping (at least in theory) in a "big bed," Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (3.5 years old). This was taken at about midnight, when we thought she had been asleep for hours -- wrong! She had been getting out of bed and goofing off all night long.

Top kid travel gear: Cosco Scenera car seat

Littles snoozing in the Scenera at Flagg Ranch, Yellowstone National Park (15 months old)

This post is part of a series on top kid travel gear.

Funny, we actually did not purchase our Cosco Scenera car seat with the intention of using it while traveling. We bought it when Littles was about 1 year old to leave with her sitter/nanny, so that she could drive Littles during the day while she watched her. We chose it because it is cheap (about $40 at Walmart) and gets great safety ratings.

But as it turns out, it's a perfect travel seat as well. It is lightweight, so it is easy to drag around the airport. It is narrow, so it fits easily in airline seats. It comes with its own handy bag for travel. And since it's cheap, I never worry about it getting lost or damaged while in transit. If that does happen, it will be no big deal to just buy a new one!

The Scenera does rear-facing from 5-35 lbs and forward-facing from 22-40 lbs. Littles still fits easily into the seat at 3.5 years old.

Downsides? There are a few:

1. The straps get twisted and stuck much more easily than on the more-expensive Britax seats that we use in our own cars. It's a bit of a pain, which is why we don't use the Scenera as our everyday seat.
2. The Scenera is less padded, although Littles has never complained about it.
3. We've found that it requires some sort of leveler (such as a rolled-up towel or a pool noodle) when installed rear-facing in most cars. We have yet to get organized enough to carry a pool noodle with us when we travel, so we usually end up rolling up a sweatshirt or coat to get from the airport to the hotel, then borrowing a hotel towel to get the seat at the right level for the rest of the trip.
4. While it is compatible with our older version of the GoGo Kidz Travelmate, it doesn't attach as securely as the Britax seats do. It's also not at all compatible with the newer Travelmate quick release strap.

Due to that last point, I think we'll end up traveling with the smaller of our two Britax seats (a Roundabout) on our future trips, now that we have the Travelmate quick release strap. But I sure will miss traveling with the Scenera. Having an extra seat for travel is a bit of a luxury, but it's really nice to not have to hassle with reinstalling the car seat when you arrive back home late at night and have two tired kiddos on your hands!

Top kid travel gear: GoGo Kidz Travelmate

This post is part of a series on top kid travel gear.

As I've written previously, we prefer to gate-check our car seats, even when we don't bring them onboard the plane, to minimize the risk of any damage issues. Unfortunately, car seats are pretty bulky and heavy, making them a royal pain to lug around the airport.

Enter the GoGo Kidz Travelmate. It's a set of wheels that attaches to a convertible car seat, allowing you to wheel the car seat around the airport. So easy!

I first bought the Travelmate back when Littles was 11 months old. We were in the process of moving from California to Texas, and had a month where Littles and I were still living in California, but Hubby had already moved to Texas. During that month, I had two trips back-to-back that I had to take alone with Littles. For the first trip, I stuck her car seat inside our full-size stroller so that I could wheel it around the airport. That worked OK, but when we got on the parking shuttle, I had to pull the car seat out of the stroller, fold up the stroller, and put the stroller and car seat on to the parking shuttle. Then I had to reverse the process upon arriving at the airport. Repeat the process and then reverse the process when clearing security. And so on. Did I mention I was also trying to keep track of a newly walking Littles through all this, not to mention all our other bags?

So, on our way to the airport for the second trip, I stopped by Babies R Us and picked up a Travelmate. It provided the same mobility as the stroller, but was much faster to set up/break down (just raise/lower the telescoping handle) and less bulky overall.

A couple of tips and quirks regarding the Travelmate:

• We have the older version (UNIQR). The Travelmate attaches to the car seat by means of two thumbscrews.
• There is a newer version as well (QRKIDZ), which offers a quick-release strap with a buckle, in place of the thumbscrews. GoGo Babyz sells the quick release strap separately, so we recently got one. I'll update my review of the Travelmate after we've had the chance to travel with it!
• We have used both a Britax Roundabout and a Cosco Scenera with the Travelmate. The Roundabout attaches more securely than the Scenera does -- so it does work a little better with certain car seats. (Note: The Scenera is only compatible with the UNIQR version.)
• The car seat + Travelmate does not fit through the x-ray machines at most airports. We ask TSA to hand-scan the whole thing, to avoid removing the Travelmate from the car seat, because with the UNIQR version, it takes some time to take it off and put it on. TSA is usually happy to comply with the hand scan request.
• You can install the car seat + Travelmate directly into the airline seat. The orange wheels have quick releases on them, so you can quickly remove them when installing the seat and then replace them at the end of the flight. (Do not install the car seat + Travelmate in the car, as the Travelmate is not crash-tested.)
• Once Littles got bigger, we found that it was better to remove the Travelmate from the car seat onboard the plane, because when it was attached, it put her a little bit closer to the seat in front of her for kicking purposes! Not good!
• I wouldn't recommend using the Travelmate as a full-time stroller at your destination. For starters, it would mean removing and then reinstalling your car seat every time you wanted to use the "stroller." Also, I just don't feel like the Travelmate is sturdy enough to take the abuse that a stroller takes. It would certainly work in a pinch, but I wouldn't plan on walking for hours with your kid in it.
• Along the same lines, I should point out that we don't typically travel with a stroller at all. We use a baby carrier (such as our Ergo) for kid-hauling duties at our destination. If we did actually need a stroller, I think we would ditch the Travelmate, and just wheel the car seat around the airport using the stroller, like we did in our pre-Travelmate days. Then we'd have it to use at our destination. But since we don't need the stroller, we're able to travel a lot lighter by relying on the Travelmate and Ergo instead.

Bottom line? We never, ever, ever fly without our Travelmate. I think it's a great investment for any family that flies frequently, especially if one parent needs to travel alone with the kid(s). That said, at $90 new, I don't usually recommend it to families that don't fly frequently, especially if they're planning to bring a stroller anyway. If you're only flying once or twice a year (or every few years!), you can probably put up with just dragging the car seat around for that trip.

Top kid travel gear: Ergo baby carrier

Over the years, we've found -- and continue to find! -- plenty of gear that makes traveling with kids infinitely easier. Top travel gear, for sure.

One item that tops this list is our Ergo baby carrier. Really, the Ergo isn't just travel gear; it is possibly our most-used piece of baby gear in our three and a half years as parents. Well, the crib has probably gotten more use, but the Ergo is a close second.

We purchased it when Littles was 3 months old. (If you want to use the Ergo with a newborn, you can purchase an optional infant insert, but I found it easier with both kids to use an alternative carrier, such as a Moby Wrap, until they were big enough for the Ergo on its own.) Here she is during her first trip with the Ergo, October 2007 (3.5 months old), in Playa del Carmen, outside of Cancun, Mexico:

We still use it with her today. This was taken on our trip to Colorado last October, 3 years almost to the day after the picture above:

Why are baby carriers so great for traveling? They allow you to safely contain your baby (or toddler, or preschooler...) while keeping your hands free. So you can tote luggage around the airport or grab a quick bite to eat without having to shuffle your baby from hip to hip, or chase after your toddler.

They're a lot smaller than a stroller, so you can travel light. They also go where strollers can't. Such as down -- and up! -- all 328 steps at Uncle Tom's Trail, on the south rim of the Yellowstone River (September 2008, 15 months old):

Or on the beach in Newport Beach, California (April 2008, 10 months old):

Or through the amazing Ancestral Pueblo ruins at Bandelier National Monument (January 2009, 19 months old):

We love to get out and be active during our travels, so the ability to go anywhere our feet can take us is really important.

A baby carrier can also work as a nice spot for a nap :) This was on the same visit to Bandelier National Monument:

I've even used it to "rock" Littles to sleep at night when we're on the road and don't have access to our usual glider!

We love our Ergo, but there are tons of other great baby carriers out there. Here's Noob on our trip to Colorado last October (8 months old) in a mei tai from Wallypop:

I have friends who have used various Beco carriers, Babyhawks, etc. and swear by them as much as we swear by the Ergo. They all share a variety of features that make for a good baby carrier (for traveling or for around town!):

• The ability to wear your child on both your front and your back. I like having my kids on the front when they are small, but around 15-20 lbs, they start getting pretty heavy to wear on the front. That's when it's handy to be able to pop them onto your back.
• A high weight limit. Even at age 3, it's still very handy being able to carry Littles. The Ergo has been tested up to 90 lbs! I think our backs will give out before the Ergo does :)
• Straps that distribute the weight across your hips as well as your shoulders/back. If you're going to be wearing your baby for hours while wandering the airport, hiking, etc., you want even weight distribution! (Many popular carriers, such as the original Baby Bjorn, put all the weight on your shoulders/back.)
• No bulky metal frame. We (gasp!) forgot the Ergo on a trip to Banff National Park just before Littles' second birthday and ended up renting a metal-framed backpack for hiking. We found that it was no more comfortable than the Ergo, and a whole lot bulkier. When traveling with kids, we look to cut down on bulk whenever possible!
• Something that Hubby won't mind using, either. I actually have a couple of different baby carriers that I use in addition to the Ergo, such as the mei tai pictured above, but Hubby says they're too "girly" :). He doesn't mind the Ergo, though, so it's nice being able to switch off!
• Easy to adjust for different shapes/sizes, if you do plan to switch off kid-toting duties with a spouse or other traveling partner.
• Something that is comfortable for sleeping in. You can see in the picture above of Littles sleeping in the Ergo that it comes with a "sleeping hood," which keeps the baby's head from flopping around as she sleeps. This is especially important when your baby is on your back, since you can't just hold his/her head steady yourself!

Baby carriers seem expensive at first -- I paid over $100 for our Ergo -- but a good one is well worth it, especially for frequent travelers!

Updated pictures!

July 2011: Noob (almost 18 months old) in the Wallypop mei tai on the beach in Panama.

January 2012: Noob (just shy of 2 years old) in the Ergo at the Forbidden City in Beijing. Noob was in the Ergo a lot on this trip. We took public transportation just about everywhere, and the Ergo was way more convenient than a stroller on a crowded subway. Noob is a mama's boy and insisted that I be the one to carry him most of the time, and it was still quite comfortable, even though he was approaching 30 lbs and I was 3 months pregnant!

January 2012: Littles (4.5 years old) in the Ergo on the Great Wall of China. Hey, she got tired, and carrying her in the Ergo was way more comfortable than carrying her in our arms! This is another place where strollers simply cannot go...

Pre-boarding

When I flew as a kid, I remember my parents milking the pre-boarding for families with "small children" for quite a while :) After all, it sure was nice to be able to get onboard and settled in as soon as possible!

Getting onboard early to stow your stuff is even more important these days, with airline baggage fees encouraging travelers to carry on as much as possible. But many airlines have dropped pre-boarding for families with small children.

Fortunately for us, Hubby and I both have lifetime Gold elite frequent flier status on American Airlines. (Lifetime Gold is given for 1 million miles earned. Unlike many airlines, American counts bonus miles, credit card miles, etc. towards million miler status, so we were able to earn it pretty easily with just a few years of heavy travel -- pre-kids, of course.) One of the benefits of elite status is that we can always pre-board. Gold is the lowest level of status, so we board after first class and the two higher levels of status, but that still allows us to get onboard before most of the other passengers.

Still, we've found that pre-boarding with really small kids isn't always a benefit. Pre-boarding means 20-30 more minutes stuck with a squirmy child in a small seat inside a metal tube. Not. Fun.

So when Hubby and I travel together, we divide and conquer. He pre-boards with most of our stuff. This allows him to secure overhead bin space and get the car seats installed (if necessary). I wait with the kids in the terminal until the very end of boarding. This allows them to burn off a little more energy prior to the flight!

When I fly alone with the kids, I still try to board towards the end of boarding. I don't have a ton of carry-ons when traveling alone, because I physically can't carry that much! So overhead bin space isn't a consideration. I leave enough time to get the car seat installed, but that's about it.

So, if you're flying with small kids and your airline doesn't allow pre-boarding, it's not the end of the world :) Take the opportunity to let them run off a little more energy before you board!

Road trip gear

As you may have gathered from my previous posts, most of our travels with tots involve flying. But we do take the occasional road trip. This past weekend, we went to visit Hubby's best friend, who is about a 4-hour drive away.

Driving is so much easier than flying because you don't have to jam everything into a suitcase. We have a whole set of baby gear that we use when flying (which I'll get around to reviewing here eventually) -- for that stuff, we look for things that are as compact as possible. When driving, we don't have to place such a premium on small size, so we bring along a different set of gear that is less compact but more functional.

Eating: We don't bring anything for Littles. She does fine in a regular seat for a few days. For Noob, we bring a Fisher Price Healthy Care booster seat. This is one of our all-time favorite pieces of baby gear. It's only about $25 and it's super easy to clean (a very important feature of any high chair!). We use it daily with both kids at home -- Noob still uses the harness and the tray, while we've removed the harness for Littles and push her up to the kitchen table instead of using the tray.

So it's a great seat in general, but as a bonus, it also folds up for travel. It's a little big to fit in a suitcase for plane trips (although we have done that in the past!), but it's just perfect for eating out around town and for road trips.

Sleeping: Noob sleeps in a pack-n-play. It is way too bulky for plane travel, but works well for road trips. Ours is a very basic Graco model. It cost about $35 on clearance at Babies R Us.

When visiting Hubby's best friend, Littles has typically slept in bed with me. (I sleep in his friend's son's twin bed, while Hubby sleeps on the couch in the living room.) But for this trip, we decided to bring along the nap mat that she uses at preschool. It worked out well! I sewed this myself (details are on my sewing blog), but you can also buy similar nap mats.

Playing: For road trips, we have room for plenty of toys! We usually bring a pretty wide variety for both kids. Hubby's friend also has kids of her own -- they're a little bit older, but Littles, in particular, loves following them around and playing with all of their toys. That means we don't have to worry too much about what we pack for her.

One absolute essential piece of gear for Littles is the DVD player. She'll happily watch DVDs for the entire drive. Noob doesn't do DVDs yet, so he's a lot harder to entertain on long drives. He's not a real fan of the car seat for extended periods of time. On this trip, I found myself counting the days till he's old enough to watch DVDs, too... :)

Strolling

Closely related to the car seat decision point is the decision about whether or not to bring a stroller when flying.

For some families, I'm sure, the answer to "Should we bring a stroller?" is as emphatic of a yes as our answer to "Should we bring a car seat?" But we really aren't a stroller family in general, preferring to babywear instead. With both kids, I've used a Moby Wrap in the early months. Around 4 months of age, they've both transitioned into an Ergo carrier, which is nice because Hubby will wear it as well as me. (He says the Moby Wrap is too "girly." :)

That means we don't really need a stroller at our destination.

Now, strollers can make it easier to navigate the airport, since they're a convenient place to put the car seat -- which we always bring, as I mentioned in my previous post. When Littles was in the infant seat, we brought a Snap-n-Go stroller frame. The infant seat hooks into the stroller frame. The frame itself is lightweight and easy to deal with, so we didn't mind bringing it along, even if we only used it in the airport.

We brought our travel system stroller (Graco Metrolite) along on the first few trips after Littles moved out of the infant seat, but we quickly discovered that it was more trouble than it was worth. As I mentioned in the car seat post, we stuck the car seat in the stroller to wheel it around the airport, but this meant we had to do a lot of unfolding/folding of the stroller -- when getting on the parking shuttle, when going through security, at the plane itself, when getting on the rental car shuttle at our destination...

Instead, we purchased a GoGo Kidz Travelmate, which is a set of wheels that hooks onto a convertible car seat. This was perfect for us. It allowed us to wheel the car seat easily around the airport, but it was much easier to deal with than a stroller. Then, at our destination, we simply used the Ergo when we needed to transport Littles. On our vacations, we tend to go a lot of places that aren't stroller-friendly (crowded aquariums, hiking trails, etc.) so we really don't miss the stroller.

We went back to using the Snap-n-Go with Noob's infant seat after his arrival, but now that he's out of the infant seat, I fully expect that we'll go back to flying stroller-less. It's certainly not for everyone, but I find it much easier to travel without a stroller!

No stroller? No problem! Noob in a mei tai wrap (Littles was in the Ergo) on a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park (8 months old)