Posts Tagged ‘toddler travel’

The holidays are tricky for your baby’s sleep. Grandma and grandpa want to spend time with the little fella, since they don’t get to see him that much. Or, you have two parties to go to on the same day, babysitters galore, or you have a lot of family members over making it really loud during nap time. Some people even like to get babysitters just to go Christmas shopping, especially those of you with more than one kid or twins or triplets, or more! After all, keeping your eye on two kids running around makes it THAT much harder to actually look for gifts to buy for people (believe me, I know!). That’s one reason I do most of my shopping online, these days. You might think that I often link to Amazon because I’m an affiliate (I get a very small percentage of sales at no cost to you), but I actually LOVE Amazon! I’m an Amazon Prime member and my holiday shopping alone more than pays for it, not to mention all the birthdays, sleep books I want to read, etc. throughout the year.

If you travel during the holidays, this can make many parents anxious and I tend to get a lot of questions about it around this time of the year. Don’t fret. There are things you can do to make the transition easier including making “away” as much like “home” as possible, being consistent in your routines, and getting back to normal as much as possible when you get back. If you have holiday visitors, try including grandma or grandpa in the routines by letting them read the bedtime stories. For more tips on your baby’s sleep, please visit MomCentral this year where I go into your baby’s sleep and the holidays in more detail.

To help some of you even more during the holidays, I’ve decided to give the gift of sleep this year by giving away the following:

•   Two copies of my e-Book, Help Your Child Sleep, a Step-by-Step Guide, to help a tired family with their nighttime troubles.
(Value: $28.50)

•   Two copies of my e-Book, Mastering Naps & Schedules, to help a tired family with their baby’s nap struggles or to help establish a routine.
(Value: $24.95)

•   Two 3-month memberships to my exclusive Members Area, where you gain access to all our e-Books, case studies, weekly expert advice by yours truly, and much MUCH more!
(Value: $18)

AND

•   Two two-email personalized consultation packages, where I customize a sleep plan for your specific situation. I promise we can get a lot done in just two e-mail! Read other parent stories. (You can also feel free to save these to use later, too)
(Value: $24.95)

AND

•   Your choice of a $57.20 Target or Amazon gift card (so the total prizes equal $250 just because I’m a little anal and silly like that. Go ahead and check my math. I used Excel! )
(Value: $57.20)

Why am I giving away so much? It’s the holidays, we should all be generous and I LOVE helping people with their sleep struggles, that’s why!

How can you win one of these lovely prizes? Just leave a comment below and I’ll randomly choose winners (using random.org).

Make sure you enter below NOW, forward to all your friends and family, post it on Facebook, and tweet on Twitter! Share! Share! Share! The baby on his dad’s shoulder at the top is reason enough alone to share. Soooo adorable!

(Note: One person / e-mail address can’t win two prizes. If I randomly choose the same person, I’ll choose another winner, to be fair. You can enter up to once a day, though (Max 9 entries).)

I am feverishly finishing up the temperament quiz and wrap-up post for my Baby Temperament and Sleep Series, but didn’t want to leave you without anything to read over your morning coffee (or spot of tea) on a Tuesday.

After I posted my summer of sleep information a couple of weeks ago, I received several e-mail messages about this summer’s travels by a few readers. The destinations sounded sooo nice! One reader was off to beautiful Greece (not sure this is where they are staying, but I liked the picture) while another was traveling to Jordan. My family and I will be going to St. Maarten (woohoo! for frequent flier miles). We’ve never been and we are looking forward to it quite anxiously. I have not had more than 2 days off in a row since my baby was born 16 months ago, including Christmas! Unfortunately, I made a critical error telling my preschooler about it too soon as 6 more weeks to him is like 2 more years. Let me give you a taste:

“When are we going on vacation?”
“Can we go on vacation today?”
“It’s making me grumpy we can’t go on vacation!”
“Can we get a face mask for me to swim with on vacation?”

Repeat every day. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but it’s enough that I know I told him WAAAY too soon! LOL Bear with me, I *am* getting to the sleep part of this post as 99% of my articles on this site are about sleep. Thankfully, I do write about things other than sleep on Babble Soft’s blog. Last week I even wrote about Baby Album Books! I think I’ll work on the boys’ baby album books this summer, in fact.

In regards to sleep and for our family trip, I’m trying to figure out if we should rent a crib at the hotel, (which is tempting considering how much gear we need to bring with us for two kids now!), take our Pack ‘n Play (though we are doing a “We’re not having anymore babies garage sale” this Saturday to help pay for our trip and I’d love to sell it), borrow my friend’s Pack N Play or buy something like this Toddler Travel Bed that folds up much smaller. I definitely don’t think my youngest son is ready for a “I can get out whenever I want” bed and my husband thinks that last one looks too much like a dog carrier, so we’ll likely opt for calling the hotel or asking my friend. I’m hoping the proceeds from the garage sale will help pay for the entertainment part of our trip.

Finally, I wanted to share my travel sleep tips with all of you as you embark on your own summer adventures. Of course, I already wrote my travel sleep tips last year, so here are the links to my flashback posts (so I can get back to the Temperament Quiz and Sleep Helpdesk questions):

11 Holiday Sleep Tips
Traveling with Your Baby or Toddler

One other thing about the summer is that it’s normal for bedtimes to get slightly later for some babies just for the summer as it is much brighter later. Once again, light is what stimulates our eyes and tells us when it’s time to sleep or be awake. So, if you have a sleeper that is rid of sleep associations and suddenly starts fighting bedtime, you might need to bump bedtime a bit later, temporarily. It will bounce back when Fall or Winter hit…usually.

Now, please tell me so I can give you some quick tips:

Where are YOU going this summer and what your main travel concerns when it comes to your baby or toddler’s sleep?

With the holidays upon us, many parents wonder and worry about their baby or toddler’s sleep, particularly during visits from family or holiday traveling. Here are several things to keep in mind for this holiday season.

Visitors | Travel

Baby Sleep and Traveling

First and foremost, the holidays and traveling, in general, is a time to have fun and enjoy yourselves! So, try not to worry too much about baby sleep and schedules when you are supposed to be relaxing and having fun. I do have some tips to make things easier, though, especially if you have a baby or toddler who gets very cranky without adequate sleep.

• Before you travel, make sure you have a well-established nap and bedtime routine. This will make it easier, when you are traveling, to have your baby or toddler know what to expect, even though they are not at home.

• You might consider adding a specific baby sleep CD to your routines now, before you travel, so that you can play it at your location, and your baby will associate it with sleep, even when you aren’t at home.

• Consider introducing a baby lovey before your trip for added comfort in a “foreign” place. A simple baby blanket or baby pillow are nice choices. You may be interested in learning when your baby can use a pillow. If you have a newborn, you can try to swaddle your baby for added comfort and check out my other newborn sleep tips.

• Depending on the age of your baby, you may want to sleep on a receiving blanket so it smells like you and give it to your baby when she sleeps. Your scent will help her feel you near, even if you are in another room.

• If you are traveling time zones, try to get onto the normal clock schedule as soon as you can, within reason. If you are traveling too late at night, allow one day of sleeping in and off-schedule naps, but then try to get back on schedule the following day. If you travel early enough, stick to the regular schedule right away for an easier transition across time zones and battling jet lag.

• Stick to schedule as much as you can without sacrificing fun on your trip, but once you get back home, try to get back to your normal rules as quickly as you can for a smoother and faster transition back home. Otherwise, parents often complain that several weeks later they are still feeling the effects of their traveling. If your baby has trouble getting back on schedule after a week or two, you might consider shifting schedules.

• Make sure you have a good place for your baby or toddler to sleep. Here are several good options for travel cribs and co-sleepers: Graco Travel Lite Crib with Bassinet or Infantino Travel Bed. If you have a toddler, you may want to get a portable child bed or if you have a bed at your travel location, you may want to purchase a portable bed rail.

• If you are sleep training, you will likely need to abandon your efforts until you get back home. Consistency is key and with schedules being out of whack and being in a different place, you won’t likely have a lot of success. If you’ve already sleep trained (or will by the time you travel), things might not be perfect during your travels, but once you get back it usually only takes a few days to get back to normal (provided you go back to your “sleep rules”).

Baby Sleep and Holiday Visitors

The most difficult part of holiday visitors is that everyone wants the babies or young children to stay up when they should be sleeping, so they can visit with them. This is especially true of those traveling far distances. I do not have profound advice for tackling this, except that it is YOU that will need to deal with the aftermath.

For those who have children who do not get cranky, this will probably be a non-issue and you can be as flexible as you want to be. But, for those of us who have kids that get very cranky, we might not be able to be that flexible. For me, when my eldest son (the one this website was inspired by) got off schedule even once or just a little bit, it took us a week or more to get back on track. I am not exaggerating! So, we had to really decide which events were worthy of getting him off track. Here are a few simple tips:

• Explain to your visitors that you understand how limited their time is with your child, but that his sleep needs have to be a priority because of his behavior, happiness, and well-being.

• Try to involve visitors like grandma and grandpa in the nap or bedtime routines. If your kids are like my son, this might not be as easy as it sounds. My older son just loooves mommy to read his books or tell him stories and often does not appreciate the concept that I’m always here, but grandma isn’t. My other son, who is just 9 months old, has stranger anxiety. But, I do the best I can, even if I have to be in the room while grandma reads to one of them.

• Try to plan ahead by having visitors come over after at least the first nap because typically that’s the most important. That way, if the rest of the day doesn’t go exactly as planned, she might not be as overtired, at least.

Whether you are traveling for the holidays or staying home and expecting visitors, I hope this article can help you get through them with as little tears as possible (yours and your kids).

Do you have any tips to share? Any questions I can answer?