Traveling is a privilege. Traveling with kids is also a privilege. It is also immensely hard, too. Whether you are road tripping 1.5 hours away or jet setting to Europe, traveling with kids is traveling with kids. It is exhausting, enlightening, taxing, sacred, messy, extremely unglamorous, selfless and beautiful. I could go on…
I never gave traveling with a baby much thought and once we had one it just kind of happened that we started taking him places with us. His first flight was to Florida at 6 weeks old. New York and Arizona at 4 months old. Nantucket at 7 months old. Hawaii and Palm Springs at a year. Probably some other places I am forgetting. Through trial and error we figured out what worked well for us/him and loved seeing the world through his eyes.
Enter more kids and we just never stopped. Road trips to Wisconsin and Michigan during the pandemic. Mexico. Virgin Gorda. Palm Springs. Florida. Upstate New York. Off we went. Was it easy? Fuck no! Was it worth it? Fuck yes! I absolutely love taking my kids on vacation (their word, not mine, it is not a vacation) and I hope we can do it forever. Our dining room may remain unfurnished but you can’t put a price on memories (I tell myself as I cringe walking by my mostly empty dining room).
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Stuck Is Stuck to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.