Things to bring on your road trip that you might not have thought of to add to the fun and ease the stress.
5 Tips for Road Trips with Littles
On Sunday we just got back from our first long weekend away with the kiddos. We drove from NY to PA and spent Thursday through Sunday relaxing and spending some time away from real life. We all had a blast especially Tyler. The trip went really well and aside from one very minor snafu, it was a nice break. The following are a few tips we have from the experience.
Toddlers and Trips: How to Combine the Two
As a toddler mom with several road trips under her belt, there are a few useful tips that I’ve learned that I though I’d share. Especially, with all the pumpkin/apple picking trips coming up, I thought this might be pertinent.
The first tip is about departure time. We have found it best to choose a departure time shortly before lunch. We pack a lunch, pack up the car and head out. As soon as the toddler starts to get cranky, we whip out our packed lunch and eat. This keeps him content a while longer. After lunch is his usual nap time, so we get additional quiet travel time as the short man naps. This process gives you a good several hours of travel time without having to entertain your toddler.
When going on longer trips, we like to plan our route and note interesting locations along the way. We plan breaks in our trip by finding places that only take 1-2 hours to check out, but are perfect for toddlers to get their wiggles out.
While driving, we make up games based on what our toddler is into at the moment. So when he was all about colors, we would point out the colors of the things we passed by. When he's into singing, we have sing-a-longs of his favorite songs. When he's into counting, we count the cars we pass. We also have special toys reserved for when we are out of the house. This makes them more exciting to play with since we don't get to play with them all the time.
While we are not cool enough to have a built in DVD player in our car, we will load a few movies and TV shows onto our iPad as a last resort. The best thing is to be prepared and have several options for your toddler. Toddlers are fickle creatures and can be unpredictable, but coming in prepared is your best bet.
Good luck!!
Cheers,
Emily
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Due to my crazy schedule/life, I generally write my blog posts the day before they are published. I have long wanted to have a collection of blog posts at the ready for when life happens, but of course life keeps happening, so it hasn't happened. So when a snow day occurred on my usual writing day, my whole schedule got shot in the foot. In a good way. Like I got to spend quality time with the family.