If there is one thing that you can count on when traveling with a tiny human it’s that life will occasionally definitely get interesting. Our recent trip was full of it’s fair share of “no fun” moments and for that reason, I decided to bring you my personal No-Fun Scenario Survival Guide.

1. The blow-out diaper that happens while the fasten seatbelt sign is on

I couldn’t make this up if I tried. This most definitely happened, oh you know, 2 hours into our trip. You’re sitting there thinking about how long it’s been since your little love monster had a dirty diaper. Suddenly you hear the ding and a flight attendant announcing that for some reason or another the captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt and has requested that everyone stay in their seat. And because #momlife that’s precisely the moment you realize your toddler has a leaky diaper. This is especially fun with a lap baby. What’s a mama to do? Well, this mama grabbed a couple magazines, put them on her lap and then sat the kiddo back down. This at least protected my clothes so only one of us would need an outfit change once that dang seatbelt sign was turned off.

2. The 7 hour layover

This should be preventable, but somehow we got caught in a 7 hour layover during both the flight to Europe AND the flight home. Again, couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried. We’re just lucky I guess 😛 My advice to you is this: pay the money and get yourself into one of the lounges. For this length of layover it is worth.every.penny. It’s not cheap, but you get food, drinks, wifi, and some of them even have play areas for the little ones. We were fortunate that Little S took a bit of a nap during each of these layovers so we got to enjoy some nice bevvies and conversation. I mean, it was like a modified date in the middle of our travel mayhem. #winning

3. The picky eater

I have a picky eater. She likes about 6 [non-squeeze pouch] things: applesauce, goldfish, bread, cheese, lunch meat, and chicken. I knew we would have issues with food while traveling abroad so I made sure we were loaded up on pouches and favorite snacks. However, I was counting on her love of cheese and bread to supplement those pouches if she turned her nose up at everything else. Welllllll guess who decided she didn’t care for bread and cheese while on the trip? Initially I was really worried that she would starve to death and then we’d be that family on the news that took their kid on a trip and let her starve, but the hubs and my mother-in-law (who has done this whole parenting thing before) kept reminding me that she would eat when she was hungry and just to keep offering her options she might like. After about a week of surviving on goldfish and applesauce the little miss decided to try some of the incredible chicken dish I had ordered and ate the whole thing on her own. After resisting the urge to buy enough of the dish to last the remainder of the trip (you think I’m kidding) it was apparent that the key to handling this situation is to not stress and just keep offering the picky one food options that they are likely to eat and they will come around in their own time.

4. The sleep time schedule

We knew this part of our trip could get a little tricky. We didn’t necessarily want to have to stop our sight-seeing in the middle of the day for naps, but also knew that our sight-seeing experience would be it’s own special form of torture less than ideal if we were struggling with an overtired toddler every day. After a lot of going back and forth on how to handle this we decided that we would structure our days to maximize “happy kid” time (aka mornings) and give ourselves some flexibility in the afternoon if she refused to nap while out and about. Since our kiddo is totally a morning person, we loaded up the mornings with activities ESPECIALLY the museum variety of activities (because girlfriend has some lungs on her when she is angry). Since Little S has a pretty serious case of  FOMO (fear of missing out) so we weren’t sure what we could count on in the whole nap-while-in-the-stroller department. Luckily, she fell asleep most days so we were able to add in some extra sight-seeing AND even some eat-while-the-kiddo-sleeps meals. The days that she wasn’t as cooperative, well, we just headed back to our hotel to let her sleep for a bit and then went back out once she was awake and happy again 🙂 Moral of the story here is to give yourself some flexibility and maximize the time of day that your baby is happy.

Sidenote: I do think that our amazing umbrella stroller largely contributed to why Little S was able to fall asleep (and stay) asleep while we were out and about. More on that in another post.

I know there are several other no-fun scenarios that parents encounter when traveling, but these are the biggest ones we dealt with on our last trip. Feel free to share your situation and any tips on how to deal with it 🙂

-S