Why You Should Travel During the Baby Year

It's much easier than you think to get out into the world with a baby strapped to your chest, with Matt Buccelli from Creative Parenting Club.

Every month, I’ll be bringing you interviews from travel experts/caregivers from around the globe as part of Travel with Toddlers—because as we all know, every! kid! is! different! I want to include a wide range of voices here, so if you or someone you know would like to be featured, comment/reply and let me know.

Also, it’s hard to be a travel writer and not place travel in context with global sociopolitical events. I like to joke that my political science degree just makes me more depressed at what’s happening around the world. This space is meant to be light on purpose, for me and for you.¹

The older my toddler gets, the more I appreciate this advice: Travel when you can carry them easily. I would have laughed at that headline, and then cried when my now-toddler was 3 months old, or even 6 months. But the truth is, as my 99th percentile toddler hits 40 pounds…I kind of miss the days when I could throw them in a carrier and explore.

I love going places with my toddler. It’s amazing to see the world through their eyes. But sometimes, watching friends of mine strap on their snoozing babies makes me think of the long, meandering hikes we’d take, the flowers or blueberries or apples we would pick, the easy coffee dates with friends. I didn’t appreciate that time at all, partially because of sleeplessness (very real) and partially because I really struggled to recover after my emergency c-section, so even months later I still couldn’t move easily or for long periods of time. I got so anxious about wake windows and feeding that it kept me from doing *more* than short local trips and outings.

I’m not here to put pressure on anyone; that first year for me was the hardest so far. But I do wish we had done more, which is why I was excited to hear from Matt Buccelli from Creative Parenting Club. His kids are 4 and 2 and they’ve been everywhere.

Matt Buccelli on Travel with Toddlers

Matt and his family in Southeast Asia.

As a writer, I love how Matt is exploring the different ways you can meet your needs and the needs of your kids at the same time. There’s a push-pull that happens as soon as a baby is born…which is part of why I started this substack in the first place, as something for me.

Society already puts massive pressure on all of us to be more, do more, achieve more. Fueled by endless ‘advice’, comparisons and social media reminders about all the ways we are getting this wrong, modern parenting culture gives us one more reason to doubt whether we will ever be good enough. With every deadline and every tantrum, the stress is compounded…But the more resistance I put up against the load of pressures weighing upon me, the heavier it makes them feel. Those moments where I’m able to let go and own it, where I’m able to embrace the daily limits and accept whatever can be done (or not) in a day… this is where, ironically, I feel the most on top of things.

I don’t want travel to feel like One More Thing. You’re not denying your kids anything by staying home. You’re not spoiling them by taking them on a trip they won’t remember, either. I travel with my toddler because that’s part of who I am, *and* I’ve wayyyy downgraded the type of travel that I do now.

Here’s how Matt approaches traveling with toddlers, living in Berlin, Germany:²

Tell me a little bit about your travel style, and how that changed since having kids.

My partner and I moved to Europe together in 2014 and lived here for six years before we had kids. In that time, we used to take a ton of weekend trips to various European cities and places around the Mediterranean. It's so easy here with the trains and low-cost airlines. Back then everything was super fast-paced: it was always about seeing as much as we could in the time we had. Even on longer trips, we were moving every 2-3 days to a new part of wherever we were visiting.

Needless to say, we travel differently now. We'll usually try and post up somewhere in one comfortable place and take day trips to various places we want to see, while accepting that we are fundamentally going to “see” a lot less.

We took our first trip when our daughter was two months old, in October 2020. Because of travel restrictions during the pandemic, it was the only way my family could meet her, because we couldn’t leave Germany. So we made a little trip out of it and drove south to the German Alps. Honestly it was amazing/probably gave me a false picture of what traveling with older kids was going to be like. We went on lots of adventures and it felt a little bit like traveling before kids, only now we had this stroller accompanying us everywhere.

I was too afraid to travel with my baby farther than local trips—what advice would you give for someone interested in doing a bigger trip like that for the baby year?

If you like traveling, and you want to go somewhere ambitious with your baby, do it before they can move! They obviously need a lot of time and attention when they're 0-6 months, but they don't actually *do* very much yet. So it's a great time for slow travel, especially when one or both partners ideally has some parental leave.

Don't get it twisted: traveling with your baby is still a lot of work, especially if you’re breastfeeding. But there's a lot you can still do with a baby strapped to your body, and if they're a good daytime sleeper you can choose your naptime locations strategically as far as having lunch in interesting places. Overall, with both of my kids I found the first year to be a lot easier than later on when their needs become more complex and everyday situations become a bit more of a challenge.

For example, the first time we were on a plane with her was at six months. We went to Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, and had a similar experience to our first trip in Germany. We went on a ton of hikes with her strapped to me and she got really good at going to sleep next to the dinner table.

Now that your kids are older, what advice would you give for traveling with toddlers?

That unicorn suitcase is such a toddler vibe.

Set low expectations. Know where all the playgrounds are. Use screen time strategically (our kids are high energy, and the simple fact is that cartoons allow us the basic privilege of enjoying a restaurant meal). Remember that every day is a series of moments, and if you have a difficult time at one moment, you can always come back from it and make the next moment better. Remind me to take my advice next time the going gets tough! (Editor’s note: Same, same!)

When you have little ones, the travel mode matters.

I just came back from a pretty challenging trip to the south of France. Destination was lovely of course, and we had some really nice moments, but every day definitely had its rough patches. Our kids were pretty overstimulated the whole time, and the basic comings and goings of each day really took a lot out of my partner and me. This has made me think more about what kind of travel mode might suit us all better next time. (Editor’s note: Oh, I feel this so much. We’ve had to do a lot of “plop” style beach vacations and less exploring lately because we’re prioritizing fun/relaxation.)

The best place to travel with toddlers is…

We took a big trip to Southeast Asia when our daughter was 2 1/2 and our son was a newborn, and we had an amazing time in Koh Lanta, off the west coast of Thailand. A lot of European families travel there in the winter because it's cheap and reliably sunny and hot, and so our daughter always had other kids to play with, which makes such a huge difference.

We went there with some friends from Berlin, but because of all the other families we also made some new friends from other parts of Europe which was really fun.

Omg, take me there! Source: Tripadvisor

Honestly, my best recommendation is to go to just about any resort on a Thai island, set yourself up for a couple weeks, and take it slow. The Gili Islands (off the coast of Bali) are also amazing, beautiful, and car-free which is really cool. Special shoutout to Pinky Bungalow Resort & Villa on Koh Lanta, which has a lovely pool, is run by lovely people, and is across the street from the beach. Our vibe is usually to alternate between a day trip to see something cool/different and a day of not going very far beyond the beach.

How was the transition from one to two, traveling? Anything different that you've done now as a more seasoned parent, that you could tell your younger self?

When our son was 0-6 months on that Asia trip, the biggest difference was less about having two children and more about where our daughter was developmentally…the “terrible twos.” Two can be wonderful and cute, but it’s very emotionally and physically exhausting.

Now that our son is older, and our daughter is approaching five, the biggest difference is that their energy together can be really overwhelming sometimes. If anything, I find myself trying to channel my younger parent self to remind my current one to take a deep breath.

What are your top pieces of gear that you can't leave home without? (Or any you *don't* recommend?)

If you've got a 2-3 year-old and you want to be a bit more mobile/go hiking or even just have more flexibility when exploring a new city, I highly recommend one of those kid seat backpacks (ours was from Deuter). We had one on the Asia trip and took it again with us on a trip to the German seaside last year. It's great for carrying your kids places, and it also worked really well for daytime naps. We were also pleasantly surprised at the amount of storage space.

What do you love most about traveling with your kids?

What a dreamy backdrop to an inevitable toddler tantrum.

Seeing how excited they get when we go on trips. It makes me think of how happy I always was when I got to go to new places as a kid, and in those moments I feel that I can get a brief glimpse of the world through their eyes. It puts the challenging situations in perspective. 👓

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Thank you so much, Matt! I totally agree with your baby advice, and have been through plenty of ups and downs while traveling, too. It’s so hard when you spend a lot of money to be in another country and your kid just wants to jump on and off a curb that looks just like the ones in your neighborhood at home instead of doing amusement park rides/seeing the animals at the zoo/insert epic sight-seeing here. Hard because you have these big expectations not met for yourself, but also for feeling guilty for ripping them out of toddler flow to do said amazing things…and that’s not even touching tantrums.

Let’s keep it real out there, mkay? I wanna hear your advice, too:

On to this week’s recs:

This week’s rapid-fire recs.

Disclosure: This section may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you. I promise I’ll only ever recommend products I’ve actually used and loved.

1. The joy of NOT creating, a recent essay from Matt that really resonated with me. Comparison is the thief of joy!! I should have that tattooed on my body at this point.

2. Packing the cooler is one of my secret Mom love languages.

3. I regret to inform you that this waterbottle 100% lives up to the hype on hot summer days.

4. The first place “out” we ever went was a brewery…but some breweries don’t like the family-friendly label.

5. Hahaha, will be thinking of this on the next read.

Thanks for being here.

When I first had a baby, I marveled at how present it made me. I could finally feel time pass, those in-between postpartum hours where all there was to do was tend to the infant, and when that was done, to stare at them or hold them until they needed you again. Obviously I’m glad this phase is much less intense, but still, summer is so fleeting, and I want to be there.

I see two kinds of parents/caregivers out and about, usually:

1. Bored on phones, yelling whenever they’re interrupted

2. Deep in the lore of whatever game is going on, often laughing

I try very hard to be #2 as often as I can, because I know soon enough they’ll leave me sitting on a bench as they run around with a gaggle of kids in their own play world, as they should. We just came back from an epic splash pad near us (Davis Farmland’s new Cowabunga Splashpad, a farm-water park hybrid) and I continue to be shocked and sad at how many people refused to run into the splash pad, despite little hands pulling them toward it. I can’t relate; I’m over there in front of the dump bucket getting absolutely SOAKED because it’s 100 degrees out and I paid $50 to be there.

Get in the water,

Kayla

Thank you for supporting Travel with Toddlers! If you liked this issue, please like it, share it, subscribe, or you can buy me a coffee. It really does mean a lot. I’m just a mom in the thick of the toddler years trying to create core memories for our whole family while minimizing meltdowns—I sincerely hope this helps you do the same.

1. That said, if you are feeling helpless, one of my favorite food charities is World Central Kitchen. I don’t know how much aid is getting to the places that *actually* need it, but if one less kid goes hungry today because of your donation, that’s worth it.

2. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.