Travel Tips

Lydia's traveling last week was picture perfect. Without gushing too much, I couldn't have even hoped for a better solo traveling experience than we had, especially considering that neither of the flights were direct; both had layovers in Charlotte. Lydia slept on every leg of our journey, and she whimpered for approximately thirty seconds on one flight.

A few things I did that worked really well:

--I brought a little cooler that had a strap that can clips around the strap of my diaper bag. This way I didn't have to dig into anything for Lydia's food and drink. Both the diaper bag and the cooler were able to stow under my seat.

--I borrowed an idea from my friend Kelsey at Adventure Mama and tied ribbons to Lydia's toys and cups. Lydia is big on throwing things on the floor, and I didn't want to deal with having to catch anything flying into the aisle or having to lean into another person's lap to fish her toys from the ground. This saved me approximately twenty trips into the aisle. I tied one end of the ribbon to the toy or around the cup and made a loop on the other end of the ribbon to go around my wrist. Flight attendants on two of the four flights complimented me on this little scheme, saying they had never seen it before but would start mentioning it to other flight attendants and flying mamas. Great idea, Kelsey!

--I went with anything that kept Lydia happy and didn't create a huge mess or ruckus. For example, when Lydia became fascinated with a little box with a lid, we spent a good 40 minutes hiding a cheerio in the box, putting the lid on, encouraging Lydia to remove the lid, letting her eat the cheerio, and then putting the lid back on. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat... Repe....