Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Leela will be about 20 months, so it would probably be horrible. I can't imagine her doing anything but running up and down the aisles trying to play with people. That is essentially what she does when we take the train into NYC and I find it exhausting. And that is a 45 minute train trip.

Dude, I clearly don't even know what month it is now. Sheesh.

My dad said he might move to Mexico because somehow it's reasonable to move to another country when you're eighty and don't speak the language. I was like, dude, that trip is just not happening so think again, buddy.

We just got home from a three hour flight, but tack onto that at least two hours on both ends for traveling to and from the airports. She was really good considering there was no nap all day and so many times I just could not let her run around. The line for going through customs was INSANELY long. Thank god one of the officers took pity on us when babynut was freaking out and moved us ahead. Otherwise I might still be in that line.

I would do it again. I'm generally annoyed by air travel even without the baby, so there you go.

nearly 3 was not bad at all, ariann. see my england trip thread. she was old enough to explain what was going on, a little bit capable of restraint, and can sit through a movie. of the 20 million children on board our two flights, the ones who were around 18 months old were the most hellish. the under 1s and the over 2s were pretty good.

Oh boy, we're doing it next month. I am dreading it already but we bought the tickets and are flying from Denmark to the US.

trip plans=
day 0--take train to Copenhagen, spend night close to airport
day 1--fly from CPH to Newark, spend night with BIL, very pregnant SIL, and their 3 year old twins
day 2--fly from Newark to Tucson, visit all other family for 10 days
day 12 or something, fly to Newark, visit more with in-laws. Don't know whether to hope their baby will have arrived or will be hanging out.
day 14 or day 1 million as I imagine it, fly back to CPH. Hopefully take train home.

Everyone says it it's way easier to travel with small babies, and tiny wu will be 5 months old so I really really hope that's true. But I am already having stressy dreams about it. Not to mention the large chunks of time we will be spending with my BIL's family.

Trying to focus on things like how nice it will be to see certain family members, enjoy non-below-freezing weather, and eat Mexican food!

Exciting! Have a great flight, and if you're near Newark and want vegan and baby-friendly restaurant recommendations, let us know!

My sister did a lot of traveling with her first before he was one (Spain, Morocco, London) and said that as long as he was not mobile, she says it was all pretty easy. As LB says, it gets harder when your kiddo is very mobile and can't understand why they need to sit still or follow directions very well.

You know, I always hear about people calling for child-free flights, but I wouldn't mind being on a flight where everyone on them were families-with-little-kids. Imagine the pressure it would take off your shoulders if you knew every single other person was worried about the same things you are and that not one person was going to judge you because they know how easily it could be them...

Oh gosh butternut, I forgot about the customs line. We're also doing a three hour trip to the beach in a couple of weeks (I'm guessing you probably went somewhere in the Caribbean too?) and I just figured this is the shortest flight Ada has ever been on so it shouldn't be too bad.
What we did on our last long flight was book the extra legroom seats for a little extra money, and the front row for one flight. This gave Ada a little place to play on the floor. it worked pretty well. We did the same thing for our upcoming flight even though its shorter because I know she is going to want to sit on me but my belly is getting pretty big so it's not the most comfortable and paying for the extra legroom was obviously cheaper than getting her a seat. And it's the last time she can fly for free!
Oh also, when she was smaller we found it was easier to get her to fall asleep if she was in window seat instead of the aisle where she could get more distracted.

Oh Tlish, I know!! I've actually seen faceboocquaintances with small kids complain that they got stuck in the loudest part of the plane (engine noise) with all the other people with kids and I was like what the fizzle PLEASE DO THAT TO ME. Realistically, on United at least you get put next to the other vegetarians. (seriously)

I think the ideal would be ripping out like 2-3 rows of seats to install toddler-sized jumper seats that folded up after the plane took off to create one big play area, then throwing in lots of soft toys and having a kiddie free-for-all.

Sashi, it was manageable. And it looked like it was standard procedure to move families with young children into a shorter customs line (at JFK). That's one of situations when you really can't let them run around but there is all this space to run, so it must be super annoying to a confused toddler.

Scandina, we took the bean at 8 months and not yet crawling and we did alright. I wouldn't want to do it every day, but it was in no way as gnarly as what I thought it would be. On the way there (day flight, UK time) we basically just catered to her every desire...the best books, favorite snacks, lots of boobies. We walked the aisles some, played with the headphones/pillow/eyemasks/yada yada. We looked out the portholes a lot too. Karl and I were exhausted after 3 hours of pre-flight travel, check-in, etc and then a 9+ hour flight, but baby stayed happy. On the way back, we'd booked a night flight and she slept/boobed most of the time. I got virtually no sleep, because she was on me, but I could relax and was happy that she wasn't disturbing any other passengers (whew).

I'm a bit nervous after reading about the recent toddler (versus baby) trips, but hopefully our "distract her for 9 hours" technique can work its magic again. A trip to Norway is in the works too, but that's a bit shorter (a little)

We got moved ahead to the quick lines through both immigration and customs on the way back into the US, no concessions in the foreign country we visited (but the lines were also shorter there).

Thanks Tofulish, I'll PM you about where we'll be staying and maybe you'll have some suggestions for us! And refinnej, it's always good to know someone else has done it and survived. One thing in our favor is that tiny wu won't be on solid food yet, so that's one less thing to worry about.

What I am not looking forward to is the three travel days in a row--3 hour train trip to CPH the first day, and then two flying days. It would be great if we could have done it differently but since we're traveling around the Easter holidays tickets are so price-sensitive!

Ha, I'd definitely take other kids' noise over being the one everyone is glaring at! But I decided today there's no point in worrying about that since either tw will be adorable and charming and everyone will love her, or she'll be horrendous but at least we'll never see any of those people again.