My husband and I love to travel and traveling is one of the things we bonded on when we were early dating. We all have friends or know people who even though they love their kids to bits and pieces, they like to take a vacation or trips without the kids. Either for couples to focus on each other, as a break, but whatever the reason, we always said it was great on them and for them, and for the kid too to spend time with the grandparents or whoever is watching them. But after having our kid, my husband and I were both in agreement right away that we don’t want to leave him behind. Of course things will be tougher travelling with a kid – the way we travel, what we do, even where we stay … but there’s only a certain amount of time they may want to travel with us before they have their own say on what they want and we want to make as many memories as we can together. I myself recall very clearly when I was a kid, my parents were going to China for a few months and wanted me to go with them. I told them I didn’t want to miss school and rather stay with my grandma. They took my younger sister instead. I didn’t feel like I miss anything until after I saw some of the stuff my sister came back with but even after that, I felt like I still made the right choice. 

Our kid is 3 now and we love traveling with him. We have taken him on plane rides and road trips long and short and plan to take him on as many trips as we can. His first plane ride was when he was one but before that we did road trips to 4 different destinations – some short road trips to prepare for a bigger road trip and some to prepare us for being away from home for longer periods of time. 

Traveling with a kid is hard – but the time spent with them, seeing the smiles on their faces and the benefits to them all make up for it. The main thing is understanding that when you travel with a kid, it is a trip, not a vacation. A trip for you to bond, grow and make memories. Each time we travel with him, we feel a bit more prepared for the next although at each age, their needs are a bit different each time. Of course I have hundreds of photos from our trips that I post on social media to capture and look back on – where we went and what we did. But I wanted a place to share more – to share how we prepared for the trip, what was kid-friendly, what worked for us, what we wish we would have known, and some honest truths about traveling with a little one in general … and so this space was created.