Adding a "+1" to your Vacation

Traveling with your eternal best friend is the best.  You get to share cool new adventures with the one you've decided to spend your forever with.  Getting to see the world "just the 2 of us" was awesome, but at some point in our adventure we decided to add a "plus one" to our travel adventures.  We love the little guy.  He's super adorable, BUT he does change travel.  A lot.  We had heard from other parents that we should enjoy traveling without kids because once you have kids, you are done traveling.  I did not want that to be us.  Traveling is part of who I am.  I wanted our little addition to make our traveling better, not make it disappear.  So, when our little buddy was 5 months old we decided to take him with us to Disneyland. I had grand plans of what our trip was going to look like..........

What it actually looked like(I'm not even kidding)

    

Look at those chunky, smoochable, grumpy cheeks.  He was not having it! Those other parents were right when they said our travel days were over.  I told Paul in the middle of the first night that I wanted to hop on a plane first thing in the morning and never travel again!  Our Buddy was a nightmare, and truly only happy when we  were in the hotel room just chilling.  It was rough.  But, I couldn't just give up!  I had to figure something out because we had already scheduled a trip for only a month later.

So, here's what I did the second time around, and for all our adventures since then....I set NO expectations for the trip.  Sure, we were going to Disney World and I hadn't been in years, but I was going to make this trip better.  I wanted to have fun.  And, guess what.....it worked.  We had a great time. 

1.  I didn't worry what people thought on the plane. I just wanted my kid happy.  And, he was.  We had a moment where his ears weren't popping, and he cried but other passengers were nice and told us not to give up on traveling.  It was so nice to hear.  Sure there were the "jerks" who didn't like my kid crying, but I blocked out what they said.

2.  We went with the flow.  If Buddy was tired, we all sat and had a snack while he fell asleep, then we'd ride the "big kid rides" using rider switch (watch out for a future posts on this amazing perk of traveling with a kid).  

3. I remembered WHY we brought him.  We wanted to show him the world, and experience vacation WITH our kid.  He wasn't just a +1 to our vacation, he was a traveler on our FAMILY vacation.  We did things different, and still had fun. 

Random tidbit...I didn't waste space in my luggage for diapers and formula.  We stopped at the local Walmart and picked those up before heading for the hotel.  

Since then our little Buddy has been on 6  out of state adventures.  He loves to travel.  In fact on a recent trip a women looked at him and said, "It looks like this isn't his first plane ride".  He loves to travel, and we love having him with us.  It actually felt really funny not taking him on our last adventure.  Part of our family was missing.  But, I will say it was a lot easier!  There are still times when it's better if he is not on our adventure, but we sure like having him around.  So, I say....don't give up, and don't stop traveling.  Just learn HOW to travel with your kid.