Kiersten’s Blog

After going on two very long drives this summer with a 3 year old and a 3 month old, I have learned that there are some things you just shouldn’t travel without (if you have kids my kids’ ages).  Without further ado, here they are:

1. Portable DVD player.  My mother-in-law hates the idea of having built-in movie entertainment in the car.  She told me that they always played games like “the alphabet game” and “I spy.”  That’s all fine and dandy if you have kids who can be entertained by that kind of stuff for hours on end.  I guess her kids were good travelers.  My family, on the other hand, never had a vacation where we didn’t fight the whole time we were in the car until I was 23.  When my dad rigged up a 13” TV/VCR to a make-shift TV stand in our VW bus 20 years ago, we thought it was genius.  Now many people have DVD players built in to their car.  We have a cheap one with a case that ties on to the back of the headrest.  London gets to choose a slew of movies and she’s entertained for the day.  I won’t travel without it.

2. Monkey headphones.  Okay, they don’t have to be monkeys.  That just happens to be what we have.  The headphones are so that the movies brought by the 3-year-old don’t drive the parents insane by the end of the trip.  If I have to hear Monsters Inc. one more time, I think I’m going to go crazy.  London sits happily with her monkey headphones on and I don’t have to hear a thing.

3. Breast pump.  I learned the hard way on our first trip of the summer that a breast pump is an absolute necessity when traveling with an baby.  You’ve read about our trip to St. George earlier this summer.  It was awful.  This time around, I was more prepared, thus the driving was a thousand times better.  Since I pumped exclusively for London, I’m pretty good at using the thing.  I have a nifty pump strap so I can pump both sides at the same time and I can just cover up with my nursing cover.  I made sure to pump before Ashton got hungry so a bottle was ready for him when he was ready to eat.  It took much less time once we stopped to feed him (who knew that a half hour of breast feeding only amounts to five minutes on the bottle?) which meant more drive time between feedings.

4. Yummy snacks.  The night before we left, I took London to Target to pick out some snacks.  We got a bunch of really yummy stuff.  Of course she wanted to open it an eat it right then but I wouldn’t let her dive in until we were on the road.  When she woke up the day we were leaving, the first thing she said was, “Are we going on vacation today?  Can I have some snacks?”  A snacking girl is a happy girl.

5. A loaded iPod.  I think back to the days only a few years ago when we had to take piles of CDs with us when we traveled.  Now I can just throw my iPod in my purse (it’s there anyway) and have a great selection of music for the whole trip.  I don’t have to decide what I want to listen to before I leave.

There you have it.  If you’re planning on taking a trip with little ones this summer, take my advice and bring these few items.  You’ll thank me.  I promise.