Hot Tips for Traveling With A Toddler
It’s not too late to make a bad thing worse.
1. Take a red eye flight so that your child will sleep.
This is an excellent plan for anyone who has already reached the junction of parenthood where sleep is no longer the goal; sleep is a myth, a lie, the white whale, el Chupacabra. Is it even real?
Rather than take a reasonably-timed flight, wherein your toddler will get up every five minutes to run down the aisle, scream, and choke on a floor peanut, it is an excellent idea to leave at midnight; that way, your child will only get up every ten minutes, and will eventually pass out with his foot somewhere near your head.
You will spend the duration of the flight in that upright position, your left butt cheek sadly asleep, but otherwise awake. Your partner will have entered a full REM cycle by takeoff. It’s good that he can do that, and cannot see the hand gestures you make. You no longer need sleep, anyway. At some point during the vacation you will simply hang upside down and recharge, like a vampire bat.
2. Get to the airport with plenty of time to go through security.
Not only will you get through TSA in record time, because that is the law of arriving early, you will have plenty of time to catch COVID from the 12,000 people waiting in line at Cinnabon. Your toddler will, inevitably, have poop shooting up the back of his jacket, so you will also get plenty of opportunities to be in close proximity to strangers who are brushing their teeth in the bathroom sink.
If you think that person with the American flag mask dangling loosely over her chin is a COVID denier, you are correct. Wait — did she just say something about how 9/11 was an inside job? Why is your kid chewing on the edge of that bench? Did you remember to feed the cat?
3. Maintain healthy routines leading up to the trip, easing the transition.
The week before leaving for a family vacation is an excellent time to start a juice cleanse. Not only will you feel like complete garbage in the delicate hours leading up to departure, but you will also make everyone around you feel like shit.
Be sure to stare judgmentally at the person who orders a Chardonnay during breakfast service. Remember: you are sharing a tiny seat with a human who has recently confirmed himself to be a fear-biter, and you can utilize every single one of these cross-country hours to attain inner peace via a grumbling stomach and brain fog. If you’re lucky, you will also experience gastrointestinal distress, and can compete with your toddler for highest number of emergency bathroom visits.
4. Adjust your child’s sleep schedule to match any time changes.
Anyone who has ever had a toddler knows that they are excellent rule followers, especially when the stakes are high. For example: if you live in California and are adjusting to an East Coast time zone, just be really upfront with your kid, and gently pin him to a mattress while singing lullabies for 11–12 hours until he grows tired.
“You’re right, mom, it is getting late,” he will coo, nodding off to sleep around 11:30 a.m. on the morning following your first attempt to put him to sleep. Two days before you are set to return home, he will adjust perfectly to Eastern Standard Time, and spend the next week rearranging your spice cabinet in the middle of the night.
5. Soothe your child with familiar sounds during the flight.
“The Wheels on the Bus” is not an appropriate song to sing for six hours. There are only so many things to find on a bus. For example, would a sheep really find their way onto public transportation? Why is the money clinking around so violently? Is anyone going to ask the driver why he insists we move to the back? Did you remember to feed the cat?
6. Pack plenty of toys for in-flight entertainment.
This is an excellent plan, and you should definitely bring an entire duffel bag dedicated to silicone discs and wooden puzzles. However, your child will prefer to play with (in no particular order): small bottles of alcohol, needles, prescription meds, your wedding ring, the tip of your nose, your keys, someone else’s keys, and the tiny hairs on the neck of the person sitting in front of you. He will especially enjoy those hairs. But only if the person in question is childless, and also incredibly mean.
7. Laugh at yourself as much as possible.
It will start as a chuckle, maybe a guffaw; over the course of an hour or two, it will morph into a sad trickle of sound, almost like an old kitchen disposal. Eventually, you will extricate yourself from your child’s sandbag limbs, and giggle like a frightened hostage all the way to the bathroom. When a flight attendant asks if you are okay, repeat that yes, you are living your best life. Close the folding door behind you, stare into the mirror, and repeat: “I am the problem.”
8. Cherish every moment of these precious, bonding experiences.
They say that with babies, the days are long, but the years are short. After traveling across the country with your toddler, you will add that the days are exactly 24 hours long, and the nights are 100 hours longer; that pressurized cabins are a miracle, and also something akin to torture; that mini pretzels are free, but alcohol is not, and that is a crime; and that you’d rather be here, the tiny hands of your child shoved beneath your bra in an unconscious search of milk, endless stream of nursery rhymes in your head, than anywhere else.
Well, almost anywhere. Tahiti would be nice.
Is Tahiti close to Newark?
