February 22, 2012

US Passports for Children

US Passports

Do you need passports for children when traveling to other countries? The answer is an emphatic "yes"!  Even when traveling to Mexico, EVERY U.S. citizen is required to have a valid passport. The only exception is travel to Canada by land or sea. When traveling from Canada by air, you are still required to present a valid passport upon return to the United States. This includes children. But a child is still allowed back into the US from Canada with only a birth certificate as proof of citizenship. How Failure to Provide Valid Passports for Children Can Wreck Your Trip Six weeks ago, we … [Read more...]

Flying With Young Children

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Today I'll be flying with the kids from Grand Rapids, MI to Savanna, GA. We'll spend a couple weeks in Sea Island, GA with my husband's family. John is driving to Georgia so he can visit a few of his helmet video camera accounts. I always like to have a few new tricks up my sleeve when flying alone with the kids and I just came across this article in by Kim Wallace on BabyCenter.com called, "How to enjoy a plane trip with young children". It's very comprehensive and contains good, solid air travel advice. How to enjoy a plane trip with young children. Like many parents with young … [Read more...]

5 Tips for Flying with a Baby

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You’ve scoured the internet for travel destinations, successfully booked your vacation, and purchased of an obscene amount gear for traveling with your baby.  As your departure date looms ever nearer, apprehension mounts as you contemplate a flight with your new little bundle of joy. Fear not.  Whether this is your first trip or you’ve already got several baby travel adventures under your belt, we’ve collected some tips to make your travels relaxing and enjoyable. … [Read more...]

You “Guten” anything for that?

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by Michelle Moore, Nurse and mother of two When a child gets sick overseas... My husband and I traveled 14 hours from California to Germany, and were DELIGHTED when our room was equipped with black-out drapes so we could all adjust to the new time zone. We were equally delighted when our 2 year old slept the first 14 hours we were there...until we had to wake her up (as new parents, it was a strict and holy rule NEVER to wake a sleeping baby). While we thought we co-created the world’s perfect traveling baby (“What great adaptation she has to a new time zone!” followed by, “Great … [Read more...]

Car Games – Part 2:Turn Your Car Into A Rolling Preschool

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Hmmm. Car Games-Part 1:Baby was delivered to you on May 22. Now, nearly four months later, we bring you Part 2 of our car travel series. It's been a wonderfully relaxing summer, replete with pleasure-filled days hanging out with the kids on the shores of Lake Charlevoix. With the start of the school year, I'm mindful of just how much time we're spending in the car! Living in rural northern Michigan, I have managed to escaped the drudgery of rush hour traffic. Even so, I spend hours a week behind the wheel with kids in tow. Studies show that much of a child's future success is … [Read more...]

Car Games – Part 1: Baby

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If you read my last post, Share Your Plane Trip with Young Kids Disaster Story, you may have realized that I started BabyTravel.com not because I have all the answers, but because I made a lot of mistakes. But my ineptitude was not limited to air travel. In fairness to myself, I wasn't inept at traveling in the car with a baby, it just caused severe and lasting emotional trauma. So this is part one of a four part series on keeping kids entertained in the car. Life-altering experiences affect different people in different ways. I used to be a rock climber. Once a year, a group of us would … [Read more...]

Share Your Plane Trip with Young Kids Disaster Story

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Sharing travel tales of woe? How is this productive? Rest assured, I am not trying to encourage anyone to wallow in self-pity or scare the pants off some new parent preparing for their first airplane trip with a young child. Mistakes are our best teacher. And why not let someone else make them instead of you? So I'll go first. Here are my top 5 travel screw-ups! … [Read more...]

Technology to Make Travel Easier

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Faithful BabyTravel followers will know that I originally published this post 2 months ago. Since then, we've seen a HUGE increase in the number of iPhone apps for parents traveling with children. I am re-posting this with three times the apps. Please post comments if you have a great iPhone, Blackberry or Droid app for keeping kids entertained! Kayak.com Kayak.com is like a having virtual travel agent. And now, mobile phone applications make this massive search engine available wherever you go. The iPhone app includes KAYAK Trips so you can easily manage your itinerary. And yippee, … [Read more...]

ProSeries Part 1: Carley Roney Founder of TheBump.com

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I've been listening to an interview series by the founder of Mothercraft Coaching, Carley Knobloch.  The profiles of the moms she interviews are fascinating.  I've synthesized the information in these interviews and applied it to traveling with young children.  The first interview is with Carley Roney, the editor-in-chief and co-founder of TheKnot.com, a hip one-stop wedding planning solution, and its sister sites, TheNest.com for newlyweds, and TheBump.com, for first-time parents.  … [Read more...]

Measuring Your Child's Feet for Shoes

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Last spring, we were packing for a six week trip to Europe. Three days before the trip, our son announced that is shoes felt tight. Since a shoe shopping trip was not in the cards, I hopped on the internet to buy new shoes. (thank heavens for Amazon Prime with free 2-day shipping!) Not knowing whether he'd gone up 1/2 size or a 1 1/2 sizes, this handy little sizing demo from About.com saved the day. … [Read more...]