First Flight: Traveling with a Toddler Across the Country

I’ve wanted to travel, via airplane, with my son for some time, but there was always something that made me hesitate and not book the tickets: his age, temperament, fear, other parents horror stories, the list could go on.  Growing up my family always took a yearly vacation and I’m glad my parents made the effort to travel so we could see different parts of the world.  I would like my son to experience new places as well and when the opportunity presented itself I took a huge leap and booked tickets across the country to San Francisco for a family event.

During the month leading up to our departure I often experienced stressful thoughts of the unknown and ran through my list of to-do’s over and over in my head on a daily basis.  So many things are out of my control, so we both needed to be flexible once travel day arrived.

One of the first things I did was to contact other moms I knew that have flown with their small children so I could get some tips and tricks.  Here are the take aways from other traveling moms.

To sum up my adventure, it was a great trip and I’m happy I took the leap of faith.  Did he freak out on the plane? Yes, on the return flight.  Apparently, sitting with a seatbelt while taking off wasn’t his thing which was a lesson learned.  Here are some highlight images from my trip.