Planning A Vacation With A Baby

Planning a Vacation With a Baby

When my mom and I started planning our usual family summer vacation I thought it would be like it was last year. I was so wrong, now we have Easton and that changed everything. Now the hotels, restaurants, and entertainment have to be baby friendly which is a lot harder to find than I thought. Here are the steps we took to plan our vacation.

1. Pick a date and hotel

     This is the easiest part. Pick the dates you want to be out of town and start searching for hotels. I love hotels.com. It lets me look at many hotel options at once so I can get the best hotel for the best price. E loves the water, but pools are often to cold for him, so my goal was a hotel with a nice indoor pool and plenty of room for his pack n play. If your baby likes being outside you may look for something with or near a playground. also, take into consideration the location of the hotel. We wouldn't want a baby who is a light sleeper in a hotel in the middle of downtown in a big city.

2. Pick your Entertainment

     This was the hardest part for me because most of our usual entertainment was not baby friendly. Look for indoor attractions or attractions that give you an all day band so you can leave when baby needs a break and come back later. We chose to visit a small zoo (could be walked in 1 hour), Ripley's aquarium, and a small amusement park with games and rides a 9 month old can do 

(with mommy's help of course.)

3. Plan your dining 

     I love planning where we will eat. I try to choose hotels with a complimentary breakfast so one meal is out of the way. For lunch we try to keep it quick and light which can be harder when you have a baby eating table food. We chose to eat at places that had kids meals like mac&cheese, hot dogs, and fruits and veggies. Dinner was easy to plan because most dinner restaurants have kids meals. We just decided where the adults wanted to eat and easily found something E could eat too. If all else failed I ordered something that could easily be shared with him like pasta and steamed veggies, chicken and fries, or soups.

4. Plan your drive

     Easton does not like being in the car for long amounts of time so we tried to plan a lot of stops and plenty of car entertainment. We stopped roughly every hour to hour and a half for a few minutes. A couple of stops were to get gas and a quick diaper change, some were for food, most were just to stretch. In the car we had plenty of E's favorite snacks, toys to occupy him, and our portable DVD player attached to thee back seat head rest. we also have Amazon Prime which allows us to access to tons of movies to keep him (and us) entertained even on the go.

Our trip was a blast. There were still a few bumps in the read when we couldn't get a long enough nap time or food just didn't come fast enough but over all E did great and I thing it was a perfect first family vacation for our little man. I hope this helps you plan your perfect trip too.