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Traveling the world with children as a family is possible. We speak from experience, as we’ve been perpetually moving about the world with our daughter, Petra, since she was born in 2009. The following are our tips and advice for traveling as a family.
Less is sometimes more. Remember there are babies and children all over the world and people take care of them somehow. I have traveled for over a year continuously with my baby and now toddler. We have never traveled with a stroller, crib, playpen, or portable high chair. While I am not saying they never would have been useful, they just aren’t necessary. Our baby always slept in our bed with us, we carried her in an Ergo carrier and she ate on our laps, tied with a towel to a tall chair or standing on a chair, barricaded with two chair backs next to her. You can buy diapers, baby food, baby sunscreen and anything else you need all over the world. It’s true that some brands might be more expensive (especially brands you might be familiar with) and lower quality then in your own country, but if you are going to travel long term, all you have to do is ask around and experiment to find the ones that work for you.
I travel with the Ergo carrier. A baby carrier is essential if traveling with a kid who can’t keep up walking fast yet.we It is great for the airport, hiking, staying in hotels without elevators or with old elevators you wouldn’t want to use, museums, and traveling on crowded subways so you can use your hands to hold on, not hold baby.
“Petra, we are going to a new city today!” my wife spoke to our two and a half year old daughter, Petra. “A new city!?!” she said with excitement and then scampered off to fetch her Dora the Explorer backpack. With her purple rucksack on her back she ran to the door and put on [...]
TAIZHOU, China- It would be a vast understatement to say that my two and a half year old, light haired, Caucasian daughter attracts a lot of attention in China. To be honest, she attracts mobs. Wherever she goes people stop and try to talk with her, they take her photo, shoot videos, pinch her cheeks, try to [...]
When traveling a long distance by air east or west jet lag is a common occurrence. Adults understand what is going on and can adjust, but young children seem to become confused by it as, for all they know, day and night just flipped. My two and a half year old daughter just experienced jet lag [...]
The Attachment to Places SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico- The kid says she doesn’t want to leave. We tell her that we are going to China with big, intentionally constructed smiles on our faces. We act excited about China. But she knows exactly what China is: another place. She knows exactly what the Chinese [...]
SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico- The drawings and pictures of a two year old girl have been peeled off the wall. The crayon drawn Christmas tree which sat next to the crayon drawn menorah have joined their brethren in the trash. The floor of the apartment is strewn with toys, dirty clothes, random tidbits [...]
I have been traveling with my daughter Petra since she was two months old. She is now 2 and a half, and her traveling gear has changed significantly since the beginning of her days as a wanderer. Here are some of my updated recommendations for toys and accessories for the traveling toddler. (Check out my [...]
We were leaving the Mexican beach of Zipolite on a six hour minibus ride to Oaxaca. Six hours seemed like a doable amount of bus time with a 16 month old — especially one who has been traveling since she was six weeks old. Traveling on buses with a child is always challenge, of course, [...]
When our baby, Petra, was born we were handed down everything we needed for a new baby. Clothes from newborn sizes to toddler sizes, towels, bedding, an infant bed, two (!) car seats, a stroller, a bouncy seat and at least three baby carriers, came from babies who had just recently outgrown them. Some of [...]
A little city of 50,000 people in the mountains of Chiapas, Mexico, San Cristobal de Las Casas isn’t easy to get to — well, unless you have enough money to fly to the county capital of Tuxtla — but it is worth the journey. After the 1994 Zapatista uprising, San Cristobal was put on the [...]
When we were in Suchitoto, El Salvador, we were walking around one day and stumbled upon a child’s birthday party. It seemed like a typical affair. A crowd of neighborhood kids joyfully yelling while taking turns hitting a pinata that had been strung up in front of a house. Parents were sitting in chairs encouraging [...]
My family and I like traveling in the tropics. We like warm weather and sandy beaches, and, generally, staying within the tropical belt of the planet makes for cheap travel. What I don’t like about the tropics, though, are the mosquitoes. Central America was relatively easy to get to when we first looked at a [...]
Ok, I’ll admit, when I left the USA with my five month old baby and my adventurous traveler husband I didn’t know if it was possible to do what we were setting out to do: continuously travel the world on a tight budget, $25 to $30 a day for the both of us AND a [...]
When Petra was six months old, she started to seem interested in solid foods, and I began to do research about how to introduce them to her. Baby Led Weaning (BLW) is a term that springs up on natural parenting books and parenting message boards. It was always totally confusing to me what, exactly, this [...]
Many new mothers have to face the challenge of when to head back to work. Some mothers go to work because they need the money, some go to work because staying home all day with the baby doesn’t make them happy, and some do it because they used up all of their maternity leave. Not many mothers [...]
As I sit in Iceland at around 4:30 AM in bright daylight in the middle of a solo travel writing trip around the country, I must wonder how many other husbands on this planet are afforded this same opportunity? Very few. I have a wife and a daughter in the USA, but I am still [...]
Petra’s bilingual development at one year, 10 months Please watch this video of Petra’s Spanish and English bilingual abilities before reading the remainder of this entry Seven months ago, I published a video and travelogue entry about Petra’s initial foray into simultaneous bilingualism. Now, at the age of one year and 10 months, I’ve again [...]
We are on the journey of potty training. But if this milestone has challenges at home, there are even more on the road. While public toilets can be hard to come by and gross in the US, it can be even worse while on the road, especially since in most countries the dirty toilet paper [...]
Travel Potty Test and Review Any parent, whether they travel full time or just around town, can identify with the challenges of potty training a child. This is especially true when the child is just learning to identify the bodily cues which tell them that they need to go, as finding a suitable place for [...]
All new mothers are going to encounter unsolicited advice about how to care for their baby. While sometimes this can be welcome advice from people with more experience, often times it is less than welcome. As if we don’t feel vulnerable enough, suddenly having this tiny little person completely dependent on us, but now everyone [...]
Care for Amoebas in El Salvador After our two week stay in Guatemala, my husband, seven month old Petra, and I took a bus to El Salvador. I had been to El Salvador three times previously and have a cousin who lives there, so it was something of a homecoming for me. I feel comfortable [...]
My husband and I flew to Guatemala with our baby, Petra, when she was seven months old. We had previously traveled with her in the US and Dominican Republic, but this would be the first time we traveled quickly with her, staying in each town only 2-5 days and mainly staying in hostels. I was [...]
Wondering how you’re going to fit your child’s toy chest into your backpack? Looking for a present for your traveling little one? Here are some of my suggestions for traveling toys. I have to admit, Wade laughed a little when I told him I was going to write this blog post. While I have plenty [...]
Breastfeeding in Public while Traveling I exclusively breastfed Petra for five months before we went to the Dominican Republic, so I was pretty comfortable feeding her in public. I am not super modest, but I’m also not used to showing the world my breast either. It takes a little practice to be able to discreetly [...]
With my new found Dominican friend and her little baby, it wasn’t long before we started commenting on the things we did differently. Mothers love to compare and give advice, people from different countries also love to do the same. There are always new fads and new fears in child raising. Here are some of [...]
Attachment Disorder for Traveling Child or Petra Becoming a Third Culture Kid OAXACA, Mexico- Petra sat on the floor of the apartment and whimpered, “Bubbie, bubbie, vroom, vroom, se fue,” with a frown on her face and a tear in her eye. It has been three days since her grandmother returned to Maine from her [...]
Traveling with a 5 month old infant in the Dominican Republic, I find that a baby opens a lot of cultural doors. After flying in from Maine, we arrived in Santiago, tired but happy and immediately took a bus to Sosua where we rented out a studio room for a month. We are now looking [...]
Air Travel from Maine to the Dominican Republic We said goodbye to my family in snowy Maine and boarded a southbound plane. Petra and I took her first plane trip when she was two months old , and now at five months she was already a traveling pro — having logged more in the air [...]
How to bathe a baby when traveling There are several things that have been invented to make traveling with a baby easier which really make sense. One is the baby bathtub. I loved the little tub my mom picked up at a yard sale for $2 in Maine and used with Petra for the first [...]
Really the decision was already made before Petra was born. I believe it was promised the minute we found out we were pregnant: Yes, we can keep traveling with a baby. After roadtripping for a couple months around the US, we felt we had gotten our feet sufficiently wet, and Petra was sufficiently sturdy at [...]
Length of Cloth Baby Carrier Systems In most of the world, the way to carry a baby is with a simple piece of cloth attaching it to a caregiver. The fabric is usually just a standard four or five foot textile that is wrapped around the child and adult in a number of different ways. [...]
Road trip from Arizona to New York with a baby Looking back on it, it sounds even crazier than it did at the time. My young family was going to leave sunny, warm Arizona in the beginning of December to drive all the way back to snowy Western New York to visit my husband’s family [...]
Language learning plan for a traveling child I realize that I am standing at the apex of a great experiment as I watch my one year and three month old daughter, Petra, learning Spanish and English as simultaneous first languages. Each day, she uses new words, all the time she is learning new word meanings. [...]
My number one travel with baby tip is this: BREASTFEED. There is a lot of research out there showing that breastfeeding is best for your baby and doctors across the board will undoubtably tell you the same. Studies have been done on how breastfeeding can prevent illness, childhood obesity, cancers in baby and mom, and [...]
I don’t travel internationally with a stroller It is considered essential baby gear in the US, and if you don’t have one in the airport you are definitely in the minority. On my travels, I have seen loads of parents using strollers, but I still don’t travel with one. At first, it wasn’t that big [...]
A travelogue entry about the bilingual language development of a one year and three month old traveling child born to English speaking parents who has so far lived most of her life in Spanish speaking countries. SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico- My daughter, Petra, has begun the long journey of language acquisition. She has [...]
My daughter, Petra, went on her first airplane trip when she was eight weeks old. Wade, my husband, had left me single handed with a new born baby a month earlier to work an archeology job in Arizona. But we both felt Petra was just a little too young to go on a cross country [...]
Trick or Treating in Mexico, October 30th warm up for Halloween SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico- Little kids fluttered by us on the streets of San Cristobal like apparitions of doom on the horizon. They were be-costumed in masks of skeletons, bloody things, rabid clowns, and anything that could be thought of representing death or fright (along [...]
Petra Takes First Steps in Mexico SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico- Within the past month, a marked change has happened in my traveling family: my daughter, Petra, began taking charge of her travels. At one year and one month old, she said that she has had enough of just following mom and dad around, [...]
Ergo Baby Carriers for Travel “You don’t need to buy any other baby carrier, the Ergo is the best,” spoke our midwife upon the birth of my daughter Petra last year. So I sent a letter to the Ergo company asking them if they stood by these words. Of course they did, and they sent [...]
Digital Nomad Room Rental Parameters SAN CRISTOBAL DE LAS CASAS, Mexico- As I walked into the city of San Cristobal in the far south of Mexico I made a boast to my wife: We are going to get a good room here with WIFI, hot water, cable TV for no more than 100 pesos — [...]
Bus options from Flores, Guatemala to Palenque, Mexico FLORES, Guatemala- Generally speaking, an international bus or train service — as in a direct line of transportation across a border — is going to cost a traveler more money than traveling to the border, walking across, and picking up transport on the other side. This is [...]
Yesterday was my one year anniversary. I have been a married man for one full year. Last year at this time I was wearing a wig and a top hat and Chaya was disguised behind a joke mustache. People were playing kazoos, everybody was standing out in a rain storm in their best clothes. We [...]
FINCA TATIN, Izabel, Guatemala- Petra screamed. “It’s alright, babies are suppose to scream in the bath,” the Maya woman who was bathing Petra reassured Chaya. Petra continued screaming. The Maya woman continued bathing. “I usually mix together hot and cold water together when I bathe her,” Chaya passively suggested to the woman who was making [...]
Traveling and Infant Development SUCHITOTO, El Salvador- Petra is a traveling baby. Before this, she was a traveling featus — though I do not believe that Charles at MostTraveledPeople.com so far allows users to account for their in-utero travels. Petra did two squinty eyed, mushy headed months in Maine before joining her father out in [...]
It is hard for me to fully explain the reason I wanted to go home to have the baby. I had been traveling while pregnant for the past six months through Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East. And now it was just time to go home. We were in Cairo, we had traveled [...]
SUCHITOTO, El Salvador- When my wife insisted that we needed to to carry a bathtub for our infant daughter when traveling, I initially took her to be nuts. We are travelers, how are we going to carry a bathtub? My my wife figured it out: we would get an inflatable tub. I grudging agreed. Though [...]
Do you have to stop traveling once you have children? Hello Wallace, If your life is set up for traveling then it does not seem to me as if having children will be that much of an obstacle — they will just change your parameters, but they won’t stop you from moving about the world [...]
RIO DULCE, Guatemala- “Hola Petra! Hola Petra!” is the call that we hear while walking down the streets here in Guatemala. If we are in a place for more than a day, the entire town has already met Petra, and they call out greetings to her whenever we pass. Petra usually kicks and coos and [...]
RIO DULCE, Guatemala- The town of Rio Dulce sits in the far east of Guatemala along the river of the same name. This is jungle area. I have not been to this part of Guatemala before — and when I think about it, this is the third time that I have traveled in Central America, [...]
“We knew that we would be traveling slower with Petra, and this is what traveling slower means,” my wife spoke as we paid up another ante on our room in Antigua. We had intended to leave on this morning, but as 11:30 came around to find us still packing bags and titmousing the baby. This [...]
My wife Chaya has continued to work diligently at showing the world of traveling from the perspective of, first, a pregnant woman, and, later, as a mother. Most traveling families that we have known of are either going on resort tours or have a very flexible budget. We have neither. These entries from Chaya show [...]
“You should wear the red dress with polka dots,” Wade suggests one morning in Amman. “Really? You don’t think it’s too tight for here?” I asked. “Nah,” he says, “you see what all the tourists wear here.” I will of course wear a long sleeve shirt and leggings under the dress, but it still doesn’t [...]
Sosua, Dominican Republic- I often go for walk into the countryside outside of Sosua, in the Dominican Republic, with my six month old baby, Petra. The sun shines perennially here, it is a little hot. Thus being, the local people occasionally show concern for Petra when out on our hikes. It is good hearted, honest [...]
30 cents a crap. That is just about what we are paying each time Petra soils herself here in the Dominican Republic. 30 cents six times each day equals two USD of travel funds shat upon. That is $14 a week, $56 a month. Our budget can withstand this onslaught — Petra gets $10 a [...]
By the time we arrived in Syria, my belly had grown round and my feet had grown slow. I was ready to start traveling slow, but we had plane tickets back to the US in two weeks from Cairo. After leaving Iraq and going back to Eastern Turkey for a couple more weeks, we crossed [...]
“5 pairs of pants, 8 little onezi t-shirts, a cold weather hat, a sun hat that fits her right now, a sun hat that is too big for her now but she will grow into, 4 pairs of one piece pajamas, at least 2 jackets or sweaters, maybe I will take a third one, 2 [...]
Apartments — not hotel rooms, hostel bunks, soft earth, or other people’s couches — is the new word in finding accommodation when traveling with my family. We will now travel the world in quick sprints, and then stay in hubs for one to three months at a time before making another quick sprint to another [...]
I hadn’t really planned on going to Iraq. Wade briefly mentioned it in passing while we were daydreaming about the trip. I shot him a “what the hell are you thinking?!” look in response. Nobody goes as a tourist to Iraq. Let alone when they are pregnant. “We’ll just go to the northern Kurdistan part. [...]
The change in air pressure in an aircraft during take off and landing can alter the balance of a person’s ears and require them to “reset” the balance through opening their jaw or yawning. This is second nature to an adult, but babies do not yet know how to do this. Instead they feel a [...]
Flying to Dominican Republic with a Baby – Not bad. Not horridly, desperately, nor incredibly bad. Flying from Portland, Maine to the Dominican Republic with a 6 month old went as smoothly as I could expect. This kid knows how to travel, though I can’t say her parents give her much of a choice. Baby [...]
Where to travel with a baby – “Some places are more risky than others, and I don’t want to go to a risky place,” my wife spoke. Traveling with a baby is going to be a different endeavor. Chaya usually shrugs at the prospect of danger, I have never heard her say such words before. [...]
Parents Choose Life of Child, Traveling Life is as Extreme as Any Other – While riding through the mountains of Arizona on Archaeology survey, a friend in the back seat of the truck began talking. She talked about extreme parenting styles. She talked about Jehovah Witnesses not utilizing medicine or taking their kids to the [...]
By the time we arrived in Istanbul I was 14 weeks pregnant and due for another routine pre-natal check up. Ashamed about how much money we had spent seeing a private doctor in Budapest, I was determined to find an alternative in Istanbul. I tried calling the German and English hospitals, but they charged at [...]
I am a traveler, my life is remarkably consistent. It is the landscape that changes before me — like different movies being projected before a theater — but the semantics of my days are remarkable routine. I sit back and watch the world move before me. Traveling has become as normal as white rice. Staying [...]
From Albania we took a minibus and train through Greece to Istanbul. Greece was the one place I had wanted to go when we found out we were pregnant, the adventures of the Balkans and Middle East seemed a little overwhelming. Being pregnant was enough of an adventure, I just wanted to relax. “Why don’t [...]
Baby Petra applies for her first US passport, Wade and Chaya renew theirs – 10 years is a magical number for a USA traveler. No, this has nothing to do with the Pythagoreans or any other classical cult, but because of the fact that a US passport has a 10 year life time. My passport [...]
Travel Gear for baby store launched on Travels with Petra – I just launched an Amazon Baby Travel Supply Store stocked with all kinds of baby travel necessities and items to make family travel easier. Visit Chaya’s Baby Travel Store In this online Amazon.com store, there are travel beds, baby carriers, toys, clothes, books about [...]
Travel Strategy — Couchsurfing while pregnant for good accommodation – Wade and I have tried several different methods to save money on accommodation while traveling. We stayed in an apartment in Budapest, slept in dorm beds in Belgrade and Sarajevo, stayed in private rooms in Mostar and Dubrovnik ad slept in a sex hotel in [...]
In Tirane, Wade and I couchsurfed with a young Albanian man, Florenc, and his mother. I was exhausted from pregnancy and it was a welcome relief to stay in a home instead of a hostel or sex hotel. Florenc was recently returned from New York where he lived and worked before being denied political asylum. [...]
“So what kind of fruit do you want?” the Serbian mom who lived at the hostel in Belgrade asked me. I looked at her all confused. “With my first one, my son, I couldn’t get enough apples,” she continued, “I could eat them all day long. And with her,” she nodded toward her daughter, “I [...]
Traveling With a Baby is Hard – My friend Craigy at Travelvice.com warned me that traveling with an infant was challenging. He gave me an open picture of the road ahead, he vividly described the rounds that moving about the world with a little person would put me through. Though I must laugh at his [...]
Traveling and Morning Sickness in Sarajevo – From Serbia, Wade, myself, and the little fetus growing in my belly boarded a bus for Sarajevo. We left Belgrade at 10:30 at night, figuring we’d arrive in Sarajevo around 6 am. Traveling at night is one of our common strategies for saving money, since we don’t have [...]
Petra’s Life Saved for the First Time – Petra had to have her life saved for the first time this morning. Her mother, Chaya, was the saver. Kicking, squealing, farting all through the very early morning, Petra wanted to get up and play. It was around 5AM and mom and dad wanted to sleep a [...]
Perception of an Infant and Traveling – I am now watching my three month old baby, Petra, adjust to the traveling life. She stays in a hotel in Payson, Arizona for three nights a week and then travels to another location for the remaining four days — sometimes Phoenix, sometimes Flagstaff, sometimes Sedona, sometimes Jerome. [...]
Wade was eager to leave Budapest,having stayed in the city for over a month last summer working in a hostel. So we got on a bus and headed to the south, and ended up right next to the borders of both Serbia and Romania. “Where do you want to go Serbia or Romania?” Wade asked. [...]
Need to leave USA for Healthcare – I am traveling with an infant. There are now many more factors in my travels. Many more “what ifs . . .” “What if your baby gets sick?” I can see the questions coming in. I asked this question myself. What will I do when Petra gets sick? [...]
The first order of business upon arrival in Budapest (Wade had already taken care of an apartment and food) was to find an ob-gyn doctor for our first prenatal visit. I did a quick google search on the internet, which was mostly unhelpful since all the websites were in Hungarian. I was especially nervous about [...]
I was six weeks pregnant when I started traveling with Number Three, the nickname of the baby growing inside of me. Wade and I would argue back and forth about who should be Number One — and then the other would be Number Two — but there is no doubt about who would be Number [...]
Vagabonds tell parents their pregnant – I had already suspected I was pregnant for almost two weeks when I took a pregnancy test. My breasts were sore, I was exhausted and I just knew something was up. I had been visiting my family in Maine while Wade was with his family in upstate New York. [...]
Vagabond Journey schedule of travels early 2010 – Travel is something that is taken moment by moment. To do otherwise is to make it a chore, a job, something that you micromanage to the point of being work. ——————— Payson, Arizona, Southwest USA, North America Thursday, November 12, 2009 Buy Travel Gear | All Travelogue [...]
I am a very lucky traveler, a very,very lucky traveler. The gamble was put forth: Chaya and I decided to have a baby 11 months ago, we decided to have a baby with whom we would continue our travels with. But what if our baby does not like traveling? This was a dangerous question. This [...]
Backpacking is dead, killed by baby – My travel baggage has increased a hundred fold in a short period of time. My possessions, supplies, and people no longer can fit snugly inside of a rucksack. I now need a Travel Strategy that can carry this load. Traveling with a wife and baby has shown my [...]
Travel with a baby is fun – Traveling with an infant means seeing the world as new again. When my view upon the world becomes glazed over with lenses that bark “been here, done that,” when my eyes become opaqued by experience to what lays before me, all I have to do is look at [...]
Upon getting a good kick in the arse from Baron, a long term reader of this travelogue, I have finally encouraged Chaya to start writing for Vagabond Journey.com — to begin writing about traveling with a baby. Chaya will soon begin writing what has come to be known as a mommy blog. A mommy travel [...]
The Arrival, Traveling with a Wife and Baby: The Journey Begins – “It is a big adjustment when you realize that you have a little person telling you what to do all the time.” -Chaya, my wife, about our new role as parents The Arrival A woman walked out of the Airtran terminal and into [...]
Vagabond Financial Crisis – I am in a financial crisis. The How to Save Money to Travel project concluded successfully — I shared a formula of how a person, any person, who can work legally in the USA can make and save enough money to travel for over a year off of 3 to 6 [...]
Infant Potty Training Diaper Free Baby – How to practice elimination communication with an infant and potty train them before they begin to rely on diapers. Is is considered disgusting in China for a person to piss or shit in their pants. By “person” they also include babies. Children in China do not need to [...]
Choosing a name for Number Three– Introducing Petra Hendele Adara Shepard She is only a week old, but is already very much like her parents: she refuses to sit still for a waken second, she craves the gentle bounce bounce of perpetual motion, and loves nothing more than when daddy sneaks here outside to see [...]
I looked into the face of my baby for the first time. She did not look like me. She was all red, wrinkly, and had an odd conical lump that had the texture of left over macaroni and cheese sticking sideways out of the top of her head. Perhaps she takes after her mother. —————— [...]
Pregnancy Update – “Chaya, I need to publish a pregnancy update on the travelogue,” I spoke one day to Chaya. “What are you going to say, ‘Chaya has a baby beluga inside of her?’” Yes, that sounded good. Much better than how I previously planned to begin this travelogue entry: ———— “If Number Three is [...]
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