Traveling as a Family of Three

I wasn't going to be slowed down by kids. Heck, I was even still going to be hip while keeping up the pace! (Ignoring the fact that before Oliver, I was not hip.) In my opinion, it was simply mind over matter whether having children affects life as you know it pre-kids - your social life, your job, your hobbies, your fitness level, your style and for me, your desire to travel, see new places and reconnect with old friends. You just carve out time in your day to style your hair, you throw the baby in the stroller and off you go on your daily run, and why would you not want to show your kids the world while they can still fly for free on your lap? Since the space needed to address my previous naivete and now, post-kid reality, would require a separate blog post for each of these subjects, I'll start with how having a baby has affected how I travel.

While doing some research on flying and traveling with kids in preparation for our spring break trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, I came across articles written by parents who've bus-tripped down through Mexico with a toddler or backpacked in the Balkans with a five-month-old. I appreciated their positive attitudes and encouragement about traveling with little ones, their tips and their first-hand proof that some people can and will continue to travel after they have kids. (And will travel more adventurously than I had even pre-kids.) But I want to be the realistic voice to expectant parents that how you will travel will change. No, your adventurous life won't be over just because you have kids, and you won't need to forgo traveling until the kids are grown, but traveling will be different.

The most overlooked impediment to traveling might not be the baby itself, but the cost. Oliver can fly for free until age two, but after that, we'll need to buy him a ticket at adult price. Add a second kid and the flight costs for your family vacation automatically double. Hence, I took quite a few trips on an airplane when I was really young, even to Paris when I was a year and a half old. By the time I turned two, my mom was pregnant with my brother and we never flew on a vacation again until late in elementary school when my mom, in a complete reverse of character, flew us to Disney World.

The cost of airline tickets aside, there are other costs associated with adding another human being to your traveling party, even if he only weights 12 pounds. We've rented cars for trips we previously wouldn't have rented a car, or rented a bigger, more expensive car to accommodate the stroller, the extra suitcase and a passenger space taken up by a car seat. We pay baggage fees since Oliver's stuff and ours would never fit in two carry-ons. We've invested in new gear, like a lightweight stroller or new baby carrier. Forever one to pack my own meals (and then extra provisions in case of delays) while traveling to avoid the unhealthy, overprice airport options, sometimes the baby's carry-on gear and the baby himself have left me buying lunch at the airport because I ran out of room to pack my own. As Oliver grew and his sleep schedule solidified, we made another financial decision that was the tipping point between paying more or not traveling at all and that was to spring for a one- or two-bedroom accommodation over a hotel room that we'd find ourselves sitting quietly in in the dark after Oliver's 6:30 p.m. bedtime.

Even if you had the room in your fairly-predictable pre-kid budget for travel, kids result in a lot of expenses on a daily or annual basis. Parents may reduce their hours to meet family demands, or a parent forgoes an income to stay home, and suddenly even frugal-minded parents find the expenses for food, clothing, doctor's visits, (especially if you have a health "savings" account plan) the fee for a class here or the family museum membership there, adding up. Even if you realize you still have the money leftover for travel, or can figure out how to budget for travel, I don't fault couples for holding off on discretionary big-ticket spending until they get a better handle on their new post-baby budget.

Even if it's decided that we can afford a vacation, we do a cost-benefit analysis on some level for any proposed trip. Sure, everyone does this. A friend found a "cheap" ticket to Germany and debated on Facebook whether it was worth it to go for a four-day weekend. After many sounded in with a flat "No!" she agreed that after such a long trip and then recovering from jet lag, she would barely have any time left to do much, so it wasn't worth the expense.

So I find myself doing rough mental calculations about the increased cost - financially, mentally and physically - of traveling a long distance with a toddler, renting the car, paying extra for accommodations, preparing and packing, etc. Chris would love to go on a ski vacation, but given that someone would have to stay behind each day with Oliver, it's not worth the money and trouble to fly to Colorado for one of us to sit in the lodge half the time. So really any vacation that focuses on sports or active adventures are out, for a few years at least. Weekend trips are also mostly out too, even to Philadelphia to visit family, which is a direct, two-and-a-half hour flight, since Oliver wears himself out from any length of trip and needs a day on either end to recover. Instead we choose destinations that we can still enjoy even at a slower pace, and that we enjoy for our own sakes. I'll factor in "showing Oliver the world" when he'll remember the trip.

When choosing your destination with your kids' needs in mind and making modifications to your daily itinerary, of course traveling is still possible, and even fun and relaxing. Oliver forces us to slow down and not try to pack too much into a day, even if that means not seeing everything we wanted to see. I have happy memories from the couple of trips we've taken with him and haven't felt like we missed out because we skipped a museum or a sight. After a couple of busy touristy days in Seattle, we decided to give Oliver a day to just be a baby and hung out in our rented apartment and then took a walk down the street to a gorgeous park where Oliver got to crawl in the grass instead of be strapped into his stroller. We never experienced any of Seattle's nightlife, even though we stayed in a neighborhood known for it, and rarely ate out. But our apartment was homey, the grocery store to stock up on the necessities for a home-cooked meal was three blocks away and by not staying out late, we always woke up rested.

I do still dream of traveling without kids. Of moving through the airport unencumbered, traveling with nothing but a carry-on. Of reading, listening to my ipod or doing my Sudoku on the flight - without entertaining someone traveling on my lap. Of arriving in New York City, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington D.C., or even Shreveport, Louisiana, and if you'll really let me dream, Berlin, southern Germany, Vienna or Copenhagen, to see old friends. Of staying out past 6:30 p.m. and sleeping in past 6:30 a.m. Of eating in nice restaurants and not having to apologize to the server for crumbs on the floor. Of sightseeing without regard to nap time. As often as my parents vacationed with my brother and me, now I know why we were sometimes left us with the grandparents.