Leaving on a jet plane – with a toddler

4 Comments

On Saturday DH, DD and I are leaving for an overdue trip out west. We’ll be hitting Victoria, Vancouver and Calgary to spend time with family, say hello to the Pacific Ocean and to those beautiful Rocky Mountains.

This will be the first time flying the friendly skies with our toddler. We are excited to go but also a bit trepidatious about keeping at 13-month old occupied for five solid hours in the air. We decided on a direct flight out west to “just get it over with”.

I hope we don’t end up pulling our hair out.

I’ve received some great advice from friends and family with previous flying-with-toddler experience:

  • Let DD run around at the gate to burn off some excess energy
  • Have lots of snacks on hand
  • Make sure DD drinks during take-off and landing to help with the ear popping
  • Have a change of clothes for DD and for me
  • Introduce a new toy / book that will hopefully be a fascinating distraction (for a bit)
  • Pray to the turbulence gods for a smooth flight so we can walk DD up and down the aisle
  • Pack lots of diapers 😉

Those are all great ideas and I intend to use them, but would love to hear advice/ideas from others. What’s worked for you? Any funny (aka nightmarish) stories to relay about taking your toddler on a flight?

4 Responses to “Leaving on a jet plane – with a toddler”

  1. pdame

    Best of luck! 🙂

    Reply
  2. Social Media Guru

    One of the better articles I’ve seen written, great job! Looking forward to reading more from you.

    Reply
  3. Brie

    We flew to Vancouver when girl was 22 months old. Long flight. We left the house at 6am, she didn’t nap all day (not even on the plane) and went to bed at 10pm Vancouver time. We had books, snacks, etc. Let me tell you, let the kid watch the tv! The girl hadn’t watched much tv until then but I did not care. I was so tired. And she woke up at 4am the next day. Vancouver time.

    Reply
    • melgallant

      sigh…i hope she’ll watch TV even if for a brief, brief time so i can eat a snack. 😉 this is kind of exciting because we just don’t know how DD will be affected by the time change, etc. we plan to roll with it. 😉

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