Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 237 | Traveling With Kids - “Our Tips & Tricks”

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Want to know how we tackle traveling with three young kids?! Well, in today’s episode we’re sharing all our tips, tricks and must-haves along with what we’ve learned along the way. Stay tuned for a future episode where we’ll be answering all of your questions about traveling with kids, we got so many good questions sent in that we wanted to dedicate a full episode to answering those! If you have any additional tips please leave them in the comments for all the fellow parents out there because traveling with kids isn’t easy and we’re all in this together :)  Check out Future Fans here! ▶ https://www.futurefans.com/?utm_source=couplethings&utm_medium=pod&utm_campaign=nov24 Love you guys! Shawn & Andrew Follow our podcast Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/shawnandandrewpods/ Subscribe to our newsletter ▶ https://www.familymade.com/newsletter Follow My Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Shop My LTK Page ▶ https://www.shopltk.com/explore/shawnjohnson  Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Defender. With a towing capacity of 3,500 kilograms and a waiting depth of 900 millimeters, the Defender 110 pushes what's possible. Learn more at landrover.ca. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to a couple things. With Sean and Andrew. A podcast all about couples.

And the things they go through. Yeah. I was actually thinking about this the other day. I feel like we need to change our test. for this podcast. You think so? I do. I feel like it needs to be like a couple of things, you know?

Like a couple things? Like we're just going to talk about a couple things. I think people get the gist, but we're now dipping our toes into more topics that are kind of about couples. They are, because it's everything that we go through. Yeah. But it's not just about a relationship. I have a couple thoughts on this podcast, too, now that we're airing it out.

They're just been all bottled up in my brain, all right? As you point to your chest. First thing is, first thing is, we're recording this in 4K for the first time. Wow, do we think it's going to work? We'll see, we'll see. But the video, if it does work, it's going to be real nice and crispy. Crisp. For those of you who did not know, we do audio and video.

Kind of a cool thing about podcasts is you can kind of just record the microphone audio and then slap cameras up just to say you did. afterwards. So that's exciting. I also was just reading about the power of podcasts and the political elections just happened. Yep. And they said this was the election of the podcast. It was. And not that you asked, but Sean and I did get asked to interview some of the presidential candidates. Yeah. And we declined. Both of the big ones. Um, we declined. That's not our expertise. Actually, I don't even know what our expertise is. But a couple things. that did not feel like a lane we wanted to cross into but anyway podcasts are really powerful

I'm really just honored that we that we have a podcast that's been going on for five years yeah I'm not honored I'm proud yeah that we've done it here's my other thought I have another thought too what is it no you go first I want to merge second cutback with a couple things I'm up for that we did that for a finite reason I know that no longer exists but do you You know why? Why? Here's my thought. We can cut all this out too.

If it's not just a couple things anymore, it's a couple things. We're just bunching that in there. Because all of the conversations we're having on Second Cup now are not relationally, like, it's not just about marriages, which that's what we talk about. You and I are husband and wife. Everything we do relates to our marriage. But a lot of these conversations we've been having are amazing. No, I agree. And I feel like they should be on this channel.

I, well, I see your merge and I raised you. I've been thinking, what if we started posting these podcasts on the main channel? I'm down. This is a productive conversation all of a sudden. You got anything else you want to bring up? I love you. I think you're, I actually, here's the last thing. You went to Boston this weekend, and you kept sending me pictures, and I was like, holy crap.

You just keep getting more attractive, and I don't know how it's possible. You're wearing like this cute little tennis skirt with some high ankle socks. Okay, give us a second, guys. All right, that's not what we're here to talk about. We are here to talk about traveling with kids. Why are we talking about this? Well, you may have noticed that the holidays are right around the corner. No, they're here.

They're not around the corner. We're listening to Christmas music. We're watching Christmas movies. Yep. It's a wonderful life. It's a great throwback if you're looking for a good Christmas movie. But inevitably with holidays, usually comes travel of some sort.

So we've done some traveling with our kids. We've done a lot of traveling with our kids. We've taken them near and far and here and there. Two years ago when we had Jet was a one-year-old and Drew was a three-year-old, we went on 15 trips in one year with them. Do you remember that? That's pretty ambitious of us. We stayed in Airbnb's hotels, we camped,

We did, like, all these different things, international trips. We travel a lot with our kids, whether Andrew believes it or not. They've been on a lot of planes. They've been on RVs, trains. We have stayed in every accommodation. We've done it all. Good memories, man. I'm just kind of, like, running through the memories right now.

It's good. Well, it's funny. People will always stop and ask, like, moms will ask me, like, what do I need to do? And part of me does what you just did, which is, like, I don't know. And then part of me reflects, and I'm like, actually, yeah, we did this a lot. Yeah. And I just had a friend say that they wanted to go to Paris. They just had a baby and they want to go to Paris next summer.

So what products did we bring? What do we do that helped or that didn't help? And, you know, they're kind of intimidated at doing this trip, even though they want to. So our goal with this episode is one to just have a time where we could really stop and think intentionally. about how we've gone about this because we haven't really done it in an organized way dig into how we do it and then two

give you encouragement that like traveling with kids definitely increases the activity and the busyness and some may phrase that as stress in the logistical side of it

like it takes a lot more planning but my gosh it also enhances the experience so much. So that's what we're here to do today. And we did just spend three weeks in Europe with our kids. We were over there for work. Let me take a second. We know that sounds so incredibly bougie and so privileged. And yes, we are totally aware how blessed we are and not everybody gets to get on a plane with their kids. But we still all have the opportunity to take little road trips and like experience new things with our children. Yeah, we're not talking about going to Paris. Maybe that's not your thing.

Maybe you go, maybe taking a four-hour road trip. Yeah. Those are in some ways as intimidating. Yeah. Right? Sometimes harder. Anyway, and we've done a lot of trial and error as we've traveled with our kids. But since traveling has become just kind of a part of our life, mostly because work requests us to go here, there, and everywhere, I feel like we have actually gotten pretty decent at finding stuff that works for us.

So maybe it works for you. maybe it doesn't hopefully as we work through this don't say oh that that would never work for me i'm not going to do it just think oh that's an interesting way to approach whatever packing the bags and maybe i won't do it exactly like that but i do like the approach of thinking about it in a different way so i want to do two things first first if you are new here and aren't aware of like our trips and like what we have done as a family let me list some for you just to give you the broad range of like the experience we have when it comes to traveling with kids. Our kids right now are five, three, and almost 11 months.

We travel with our babies starting from 12 weeks old. We took Drew on a trip to Park City when she was four or five weeks. Is that right? I don't think that's possible. It was October 29. She was born and we went to the grand opening of Woodward in December. I think it was five or six weeks. It's aggressive.

That's aggressive. But yeah, we travel really early with our babies. We're not recommending that, but. But it's not just Paris trips. We have gone on multiple mission trips. We have gone to the lake. We've been in RVs. We have gone and stayed in the mountains.

We have gone to Nana's house and stayed at friends' houses. We have done the community living with our extended family, where we have shared a bed with all of our kids. and we've also been in places where each kid gets their own room. So I want to just do the caveat of like, we've kind of done it all with them. We've been on a cruise ship with our babies. I forgot about that.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. We've been on small boats. We've done trains. Yeah. We live in Nashville, Tennessee. Most of my family is in Indiana. Most of Sean's family is in Iowa, so we'll make that road trip,

which is about four and a half hours to Indiana. And anyway, yeah, all the car seats, all the snacks, all the bags for a two-night trip or a day trip all the way to a three-week trip where you're in Europe and you don't have access to the normal resources. So to Sean's point, we have dabbled in a little bit of all environments. And we have also done trips where we take our parents with us to have extra help. When we went to Paris, we did take my mom and Andrew's mom

because we were working at the same time and we know that's. to massive luxury, but we've also done trips across the world and overseas where we take all of our babies by ourselves. So with that. Love it. Let's dive on it. Okay. Should we just start with Paris? Let's just start with Paris. Let's do it. I want to start with, is there anything you'd have done differently for our Paris trip? Would you have packed anything different? Here's the first thing that comes to mind. Bear, our youngest, was seven months old, seven and a half months old when we took the trip. We took, there was a 9 p.m. flight from Nashville to London.

A red eye overnight. That we thought, this is going to be perfect. Bear's going to be tired. Usually it goes to bed at 7. This is a 9 o'clock flight. We'll show up to the airport at like 7.30, go through security. Hopefully he'll fall asleep in a stroller and then be asleep the whole entire flight. We literally thought he was the easy one and we were worried about the toddlers.

Oh, were we wrong? So it turns out Bear didn't sleep at all. Maybe he slept, maybe he slept 15 minutes. I'm not sure. We were working on that flight. We hit low points. Between like the announcer for boarding, waking him up, and the announcer on the plane with the pilots and everything,

and then the lights on the plane, and then all this stuff. And then he didn't fit in the bassinet. The bassinet was a joke. It was a basket. It was a hand towel basket that they handed us. and they're like, this is the bassinet that you booked. So we didn't sleep much. So I think now I know that a red-eye flight for a young child

is not a good idea. I think I should have known that beforehand. Yeah. But I was overly optimistic. We were very optimistic that an overnight flight for all of our kids would be the best option because they would sleep, they would get there, we would start our new day.

And we both agreed in flying home, having not taken that option, it yes is more work to like entertain your kids for a very extended period of time in a seat on a plane like that takes more planning you have to bring a lot more activities

you have to space out your snacks and your food and like going potty and all of that but it just it's so much better to just exhaust yourself with playing than try to fight the sleep monster for six plus hours

yeah I do want to talk about, because you do a phenomenal job with this, what does it look like? So we have all the check bags that we can talk about what you pack in there, diapers and all the stuff. But then the bags that we bring on the plane, you've been very thoughtful with. Yes. So our bags on our plane that we always bring, I do not. And I highly recommend this, you guys. I do not let our kids carry their own backpacks through the airport. Why? Because kids don't carry their own backpacks to the airport if they do for like 10 minutes great but other than that you're now

carrying two extra backpacks also kids backpacks are small and they don't hold a lot so i always have one big backpack and then one rolling carry-on in addition to my bag which is a backpack that is mostly my stuff some kid stuff so i'd say for the most part especially if we're taking an overseas flight or if we're going on like a long trip we'll take two rolling carry-ons and two backpacks that mom and dad carry that's it um by the way if if you have if you don't have this look into it we have our our backpacks like have like a little strap on the bottom that yeah that latch on to the roller bags so that you know when you're walking through the airport the less you can carry the better so we're trying to roll the backpack on the roller bag so that we can either carry a kid or

maybe we're carrying the backpack and the kids riding on the roller bag which is also clutch yes your kids are probably like, I'd say two and a half, two, two and a half they started being able to have enough strength to like hold themselves on the roller reliably. So anyway, it's like you don't want to be carrying a backpack and two kids that just feels like a lot. Carry on. Well, also sometimes bring a stroller through the airport. You can usually move faster.

That is though one more thing that you have to like fold up and gate check. If you're going to do a stroller, I actually don't know if I'd do a duna. Duna's are clutch in most situations, but they don't have the little under-carriage where you can put something like a backpack. I actually like having the stroller with us because you can throw whatever in the bottom of it and be good to go.

One thing that I will say with strollers, and you guys might disagree with this, but I have seen a lot of families who travel with their strollers, who when it comes time to gate-check them, they'll bring all of like the transfer. travel bags, and they'll, like, break it down, and then they'll protect their strollers. Oh, this is it. The day you finally ask for that big promotion. You're in front of your mirror

with your Starbucks coffee. Be confident. Assertive. Remember eye contact. But also, remember to blink. Smile, but not too much. That's weird. What if you aren't any good at your job? What if they dim out you instead? Okay, don't be silly. You're smart. You're driven. You're going to be late if you keep talking to the mirror. This promotion is yours. Go get them. Starbucks. It's never just coffee.

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We still have some of the same strollers that we've had since Drew. strollers get destroyed by your children. In normal everyday use. In normal everyday use. They puke. They poop. They spill. They wipe their dirty hands and their dirty paws on everything.

Having an airport attendant toss it onto a conveyor belt and it get a little dirty, I think is worth the effort in time of like... Not having to put it in a bag. Yeah. Don't put it in a bag. Don't take it apart. I think up a baby, you can like truly dismantle your entire upper baby and put it in a travel bag. Don't do that. No.

It takes so much time and effort that just like fold it up and toss it out. Maybe that's more insight into our style and lack of like cleanliness. It's also probably a three kid thing that like we don't have that. Yeah, I'm glad we don't do the bag thing. We've never really talked about that, but I'm glad we don't. So with our two roller bags that we take on the planes when it's a longer trip in our time, two backbacks. In those, we pack the same exact thing every time.

Toys, activities, coloring books. I always forget the name. There's this certain type of slime that you can buy at Target. That it's not slimy enough to like get stuck into carpet

but it's not and it's not fluid or liquid enough to get flagged by TSA. I think it's like Sam's or Alex. It comes in a tin. I think it's something Putty. Just Google Target Putty. Okay, putty.

Great, very great. But it's a certain type of, whatever. I'll put four or five cans of them. Crazy errands. Crazy errands. It's the best. So coloring books, sticker books, any type of toys

if your kids are super attached to them. But in my bags, it's activities for the kids, like distractions, snacks, and then all of their must have, hysterical meltdown if we lose it essentials so like if you're pack if you're checking bags

and they get lost what can your child not live without talking blankies yep uh passies yep throughout that age sound machine sometimes yeah i will say too a change of clothes we usually do the the favorite toys in our backpacks that we'll put at our feet in the airplane seat and then that'll keep them busy long enough to have everyone get on the plane, everyone sit down for takeoff. Maybe by then they're tired of it. But then it's way, uh,

it takes more effort to get into the carry on like zip bag that we might store in the overhead. So we put, we put like the more nuanced things in those as opposed to the backpack. I will also say that. Wow, we could go down the giant rubble. I'm realizing how many things we've tried and failed. and disliked.

I'll say this. On flights, I have single-handedly wasted more money and resources trying out every possible blow-up footrest, blow up bed. Breast milk warmer. Breast milk warmer. Remember that thing? The pole suitcase that turns into like an extra bed space for the kids. none of it works none of it is worth the money

trust me none of it none of it and it ends up just being like if you blow up that mattress and then you have this whole extra thing there that's just taking up space

and then the amount of time it takes to unblow it up and fold it back up into the same size and shape that it was just trust me none of it is worth the effort bring their blankies

bring something that makes them feel warm and fuzzy just in like being comfortable the rest you can deal with we're also pretty friendly to the iPad on airplanes obviously that doesn't apply to kids of all ages I feel like if the kid is under like I feel like one and a half our kids were not interested in screen time at all

over one and a half they're a little more like attentive to it but we got each of them little headphones off of Amazon for cheap and then we'll just give them this iPad and they'll watch it we also did put a lot Sean put a lot of effort into creating a list of all the products we use for traveling yeah I think it skews probably mostly international travel so keep that of mind like long flight stuff but we'll link that down below and that is that is a pretty extensive list of all the things and to her point we've tried so many more things this is what made the final cut so I will also say with the iPad something that we have figured out that has been brilliant um If you don't want the iPad, leapfrog products have been awesome. So like the leapfrog books and activities, our kids absolutely love and they'll spend hours on. But on the iPad, we're not always just serving up movies. Make sure you download your movies.

Make sure they're not like Wi-Fi specific. Download them. But we do Duolingo ABC. Yeah. Which Drew will do for five hours straight, which is wild. It's a lot of fun for kids. Or here's a hack. You can do it on your iPhone or an iPad.

If you go into your notes, like just your basic notes app, you can color on your notes app. And that Drew and Jet will do for at least an hour. They do like sketches. You can change colors. You can change crayons or markers or whatever. But you can do that on an iPad as well. We've also readjusted our expectation.

It's not like you give the kid the drawing pad or the iPad. iPad and say, okay, I got to do what I want. It is actually, it's worked out much better when that just consumes most of their focus and attention and we're still pretty engaged with the kid. Like, oh, wow, you just drew a motorcycle. Yeah. Which I think feeds into them being focused on that for longer as opposed to like just being hands off.

So like you're still doing the thing. You're just trying to keep them distracted to some degree. um also the so the the bags that we check yeah talk about that those are those are the big boy bags we i try to pack as minimal as possible you do a great job paris we had a lot we had three three massive bags or two yeah i don't know um let's just let's just talk about like a one week trip to let's say like Los Angeles or something a one week trip to Los Angeles I'm going to try my hardest to do one bag for Ander and I so like we share a bag and then one bag for all the kids and I try to pack I don't know just like your basics your shoes anything that you would use

on a daily basis but try to extend it a little bit and then I try to pack diapers wipes sound machines, monitors, blankets, toothbrush, toothpaste. Understanding, though, that any of those items we can pick up at Walgreens or CVS if we need it. So typically the way it is, it's, I don't know what the dimensions are. It's probably four, four feet long, three feet? Yeah. It's like a medium size. Anyway, it unfolds.

We use Toomey. One side is filled with the kids' clothes. By the way, we never used to do laundry on vacation before we had kids. And I feel like now it's actually really helpful to like just say, let's assume we're going to do laundry once in this one week trip. So one side is full of the kids' clothes. One side is full of all like the trinkets that we use for sleep. So the sound machine, she usually has some portion of it filled with diapers. Which we're also kind of getting out of that era.

So it's different. You definitely pack more for an infant and you lighten the load the older the kids get. Yeah. Infants are more particular. You need sleep sacks and bottles and like all of this stuff, whereas kids you don't really need. I will bring one sippy cup or water bottle per kid. When we are traveling, we aren't specific with like their bottles or their sippy cups

since we only bring one. We'll do a lot of like filling water up at the airport or getting warm milk or something from Starbucks or from, you know, on the plane, you can ask a stewardess to do that. Yeah. When we arrived to the airport, we've started using the curbside check-in. Yeah. Southwest, baby. Yeah.

So, like, the less time you can have with all the kids and all the bags simultaneously, the better. So we'll usually just give the people there a tip. to check that in. And then, yeah, I think... Okay. Go ahead. I have another thought. One of the questions you guys asked was,

how do you handle carrying all the kids' stuff, such as pack and place, car seats, strollers, luggage? Here's another thing. Here's another trick that you can do. Traveling with pack and place, car seats, strollers, luggage, etc., can be a lot. Depending upon how long your trip is, I don't know what the balance is here.

Maybe it's just like filtering through what the price would be or the logistics of it all. But anymore, most places, even in the world that you would travel to, have rental options for pack-in-place, car seats, strollers, anything like that. It's always worth calling your hotel to say, do you guys have bassinets? Do you have cribs? Do you have pack and plays? Do you have strollers? Do you have anything available that you can put in my room?

Because that changes what you have to pack. A lot of times hotels even have shuttle services that can pick you up from the airport. And some of them have car seats. If you, like, tell them I have an infant. They have those on stock. Pretty huge. That's helpful if you're in a hotel. If you're in an Airbnb, what's the service you use for the...

So you can. either ask your Airbnb if they have it or shoot what's the name of it baby rental baby quit yeah baby quip.com so you go to baby quip.com you type in the address you're staying at and all of these moms and families that like live nearby can basically like rent out a lot of their products and they're very clean they're very safe they'll drop them at the door they'll pick them up when you leave. It's a wonderful service, so much so that we went to Northern California when Drew and Jet were really young and we were staying in Airbnb and it was just we had so much stuff. We had three trips consecutively back to back so we didn't, we weren't able to like

travel with strollers and car seats and pack and place. It was just way too much. So we rented it and you can even like rent packages of like toys based on do you have girls or boys what are their ages they'll bring barbies they'll bring some like books and then some services are like obviously cheaper than others you just kind of have to like search around tsa precheck and clear uh we do have tsa precheck um we got global entry known traveler number which then carries over in the tsa precheck i think it's absolutely worth looking into um obviously there's restrictions like locations certain certain locations do it and then obviously there's a price to pay as well but if the parent has tsa pre-checked then children 12 and under can go with their parents through the pre-check lines and um i guess children 13 to 17 can use the tsa pre-check lines if they're traveling on the same reservation as their parent so a slight nuance there I think that's helped a lot clear we have it but we don't really use it we just I don't think it's that much better

than like a TSA pre-trait I think they're all the same at the Nashville airport it's pretty much the same I know at Denver Airport clear makes a huge difference Florida I think Orlando yeah do we eat it at the airport to bring food so as soon as we get through security we pretty much go to the gate we try to find like a little isolated group of seats that we can have the kids run they'll they have a lot of energy so they're jumping they're running they're crawling through the seats we try to just have like a little corner to ourselves usually one of us as parents will go get food and bring it back um and then we'll save the snacks mostly for the plane obviously it doesn't the kids sometimes want to eat the snacks maybe

they want to eat the food it depends um but that's how we approach that um two more questions that I saw um how do you handle flight tantrums oh let's talk about that because that was a big that was a big theme of our Nashville to London flight it's gonna happen we didn't handle that one well to be honest emotions were high yeah we were it was it was but hard but it was also our baby which is so hard and I was postpartum I think that was self-impostress yeah I don't think it was like other people giving us dirty looks or flight attendants stressing. Actually, the flight attendants end up being really, really great. I think if you're nice to them, this is how it kind of works in life. They'll reciprocate that. But, uh, summer's here. And you can now get almost anything you

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with the chair and everything. Ask your doctor for Wagovi by name. Visit wagovi.comi.com for Savings. Exclusions may apply. It's just, I don't know. I guess we have, yeah, we had the expectation that we were going to be sleeping, which was wrong. So then we, we responded to it with like, you know, we were. We won't ever do an overnight flight again. Let's just say that. When I say we were stressed, it was mostly just tension between. John and I of... We weren't speaking. We didn't talk that whole time.

No. I do think... He was so sad, though. I think most people on a flight have grace and forgiveness for kids on the flight. Also, I don't... We have not had it. Bear lost his stuff. It's been very rare that our kid would have just absolutely lost their marvels in the flight.

I think you've done a good job, even with like their ears popping, having them drink something. Yep. What else do you do? Chew gum, give them food, drink a bottle, something like that, just to make sure. Yeah, so we're trying to... With infants, I always nursed or fed them a bottle on takeoff and landing. Always. Yeah.

We try to count for all those variables, like physical, are they hungry, are they thirsty, do they need to go to the bathroom? We try to get them with as much energy out as possible. So to set ourselves up for the best physiological, you know, approach on the flight. The next question was how do you handle potty training on a flight? This, I actually, I don't think it's difficult. We were dealing with potty training with Drew and Jet at different times when we were flying.

And what I always did is I brought emergency pull-ups. And I basically would just talk to Drew and Jet and say, like, do you have to go potty? And if they had to go potty in a time where, like, you weren't allowed to get up and go, use the bathroom, it would be emergency pull-up time, which to me is the same as them going to the toilet. Because they're like, Mommy, this is an emergency. I have to go potty.

And so in their seat, I would like put a pull-up on them really quickly. I think a lot of people do that on a car trips as well. Yeah. Maybe pull over, put the pull-up on, take care of that. But in the potty training situation, they're still voicing that they have to go. There are some other times

to, like, if you're in the car and you can't stop. A lot of times I would just put my kids in pull-ups because in the potty training process, they're constantly trying to go potty, you know, just giving them grace to be like, you don't have to be a big kid right now. You can go pee in your pull-ups. And I think you taking the initiative to remind them to does help. How do you get them to sleep on the plane as a baby? Don't expect them to. Or, yeah, I would not expect them to. I think, let's see, was Jet our best plane sleeper? Always. Jet slept really well on the plane. Bear, I would say not really. Bear wants to always be a part of the action. So if anybody's up, he wants to be up. He gets distracted.

But Jet just loved cuddles and he would fall asleep if he gave him a passie and held him. Drew. Drew had a hard time. Drew would fight it a lot, just like Bear. Yeah. So I think it's kind of case by case. We do. bring again all their sleep stuff pretty much with us on the plane and then the white noise of like the flight helps obviously like closing the windows making sure the air is on in their face helps and then we always had better luck with window seats than we did with aisle seats I would say also one of the questions says how do you handle nap schedule on a plane or while traveling have grace throw it out the window for a while so don't don't try to like don't book flights

like we did that mess them up completely like overnight now i do have friends who prefer overnights and it works with their kids it just didn't with us so we try to travel during the day and always protect their sleep at night which i think it's easier give them grace with napping don't try to force them to sleep don't try to force them to stay on schedule it's going to be fluid but i would also say because one of the other questions is the flight there or the flight home harder i would always have this expectation and i don't know why it's been like this especially with time changes i think it is always easier going than coming home and maybe it's just because they're home and they feel this freedom

and like the excitement has worn off but going like we have gone to Greece we have gone to um we've flown very far distances

with our kids and had massive time zone changes and for them it has always been easier going than coming home going it always took a day or two to adjust coming home it took two weeks yeah every time

renting a car versus using Uber. Rent a car. Does Uber have car seat option, don't they? Uber has car seat options only in major cities. So if you're going not to L.A. or New York, I would say rent a car. Because Uber can turn you down if you don't have a car seat. It's also so hard to lug around a car seat and it's so much easier to rent a car.

Also, rental car agencies have the option of rent a car seat. contain car seats. You can also go to lost and found at airports and see if they have any lost and found car seats that you can borrow for a short amount of time. We have done that before. We'd always return that. Yep. We've also used Turo. Sometimes we're familiar enough with airports to know like it's going to be a long trip to get to the rental car place. And then that's obviously its own sequence of events and hassle. So sometimes Turo, you're able to get a car sooner and easier to you are oh yeah it's like Airbnb but for cars but obviously people's personal cars obviously the the rental car depends on a lot of stuff like where

you're going how long you're staying whatever but we do like we try to think of things as minimizing transitions of unloading bags loading bags whatever and I think having a rental car like even when you get to the Airbnb it's like this the the time window that you you have when you have a ruinal car is so much larger than like when the uber driver's trying to get you out and then you're like i don't know you're feeling rushed so for us that's kind of helped just to pull up park the car we'll take the kid in put them to sleep and then we'll get the bag later and then it's it's like a little more casual i will say too we have done international trips where we have rented cars and not rented cars so when we went to london we didn't rent a car we used public

transportation and that was actually wonderful the taxis were wonderful we used bears duna then and then the kids we'll put it in the link below there's like this new harness vest that you can get for kids where it's not like lugging around a car seat but it's still safe for them in italy we actually did rent a car so we have done both but i do think internationally you are you're going to have a harder time finding car seats because it's all just like different standards and protocols so thinking

doing more logistical thinking when it comes to that yeah uh let's do this let's end this as a part one well let's end this after I have one question and we'll do a part two with some more specifics like uh what our setup is once we get there kind of more specifics of the of the products that we do pack or what we pick up when we get there. But one thing I was just thinking of, is there anything snack-wise?

We didn't really talk specific snacks. And I do actually feel like we are really diligent with not giving the kids sugar. Yeah. We're not like pump them with juice or candy or high sugar content stuff like that, which I think has really, really helped us. So what snacks do you pack? I will say. So in my bag that we packed from home,

I do a lot of like the dry good stuff. So we do a lot of kind bars. We do a lot of macro bars. Kids love Z bars. Yeah. So we'll do bars. Your Annie's goldfish or like whatever. I'll put that kind of stuff in my bag.

And then when we get to the airport, I feel like airports are getting really, really good now with snacks. With MX Platinum, access to exclusive MX pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex.

Presale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca. slash Yanex. Your normal airport newsstand shop, if that makes sense, usually you can find there without fail. You can find Greek yogurts, which is great, granola or nuts, trail mix. You can find hard-boiled eggs, which might grow some people out,

but I think it's a great option. Your kid love hard-boiled eggs and pickles. You can always find pickles. Yeah, yeah. Hummus with pretzels, hummus with veggies. You can do charcutorri little plates and trays that have like the veggies and cheese.

You can also get cheese sticks now, almost everywhere, like string cheese. And then you can also get in almost every kiosk or airport. They have these little trays. that have like salami or prosciutto or some sort of like meat and cheese with crackers. So we like load up on all of that and take that onto the plane with us. Yeah. And I'm also thinking about it.

As tempting as tempted as I get walking through the airport with all the restaurants that are there, like burger joints, pizza, whatever. We actually don't usually eat that ourselves, which I think helps us physically respond well. Yeah. And also prevents our kid from eating. that and thus sets them up for like a good physical experience you don't want to be on the if if it's hurting your belly while you're on the plane it's probably going to hurt theirs so we usually eat the hummus and pretzels I usually get like a protein drink or something we'll make yogurt parfaits like you can you can buy like a berry cup and a Greek yogurt cup and

like mix up a parfait I think setting yourself up for success is just as important as setting your kid up um is there anything else there. Trying to think. Yeah, we're not really introducing anything wildly new. No. So it's like if they eat the snack at home,

that's what we're packing as long as it meets the general health criteria for us. All right, we'll end it there. Okay. Man, we really got heated up there. We were freaking rolling.

There's so much to this. It's weird to think that this has become so natural for us when it is so complex. No, it's, no. I want to close by saying it is not that complex. I think going, it's going to be okay. I think listening to episodes like this or looking up whatever, whatever your source of information is does help you be more thoughtful in your trip. It's not that complicated. It is worth putting thought into though. Here's my last piece of advice. To everyone out there who's like, I'm just going to wait until they're older and it's easier.

It's not going to be easier when they get older because it will still be new. What we have learned firsthand is kids thrive and love to be included. Like, whenever we include our kids

in a new adventure, they surprise us every time. Yeah, true. Our kids talk about Paris and Italy every single day like literally every single day they loved it they talk about Greece the big boat they talk about Mexico Mexico the mission trips they love being included it makes them feel responsible it makes them feeling just like special so don't underestimate what your kids can do because they're amazing little creatures guys bring them with you rip the band-aid now not

later if you want to we're not you don't need to travel have a happy life no but if you are traveling it's so much better to bring your kids it i agree yeah it's it's really precious memories even like the hard moments yeah even the hard moments it's like oh my gosh do you remember when drew was six weeks old in park city and we couldn't get her to stop crying and so we just did laps with her and her stroller around the kitchen island i think i did it for four hours And that's like a precious memory of Drew and like, you know, she, she wouldn't like being, she wouldn't be mean. Keep it together. Keep it together.

Anyway, it's good times. Let us know what you think of this episode and let us know if you have any other tips. We're going to do a part two. Holidays are just around the corner. So hopefully this helps. Hopefully this makes you feel encouraged and not overwhelmed. That's our intention. and that's been our experience as well.

So if you made it this far, please subscribe to the show, give it a rating, thumbs up on YouTube, always helps. And we'll see you next week. I'm Andrew. I'm Sean.

East Fam out.