7 items I WON'T FLY WITHOUT when traveling with my TODDLER (after 50 flights together)

After flying about 50 times with my now two-year-old son around the world since he was three months old, people are often asking me what are the things I would say are essential to bring with you on the plane with you when you're traveling with a baby or a toddler. And I usually tell them first after they have these five basic categories down. If you don't know the five basic things that you need to bring with you, make sure that you watch this video after you finish watching this one. There are seven lesser-known things that I like to pack in my carry-on bag with me to ensure that we're going to have a perfect, nearly perfect flight. Of course, we are all different and all of these are personal preferences. Please let me know in the comments down below what your must-haves are for traveling with your baby or your toddler. So I'm going to start with today a quality water bottle, one that does not leak. So we have settled on this Yeti. Originally, I liked it because I really liked the color of it, which my husband thought was ridiculous, but he is no longer complaining because he sees what high quality it is and how it is actually a good water bottle. And no matter what kind of water bottle you use, please try to remember to unscrew it during takeoff, something that I have forgotten multiple times. Either make sure your water bottle is empty or unscrew it because what will happen is once you're in the air, the pressure change will make your water bottle explode, will make it squirt as soon as you open it. On our last flight, I unfortunately opened my son's water bottle straight into his nose. Water shot straight into his nose, which you can imagine was not a pretty scene with a two-year-old. Number two, bring a tote bag with you, rolled up in your carry-on because when you get ready to disembark to get off the plane, there's going to be stuff everywhere and it's really great to just have a tote bag with you to throw all of your random items in instead of trying to repack your carry-on bags perfectly when you're just trying to get off the plane as quickly as possible. Number three is a tablet. I just don't want to travel anymore with a toddler without his tablet. It's not something that we use in everyday life. We save it for travel days so it's something special and exciting for him. We don't really have any rules as far as entertainment and screen time and food and beverages on travel days. It's really anything goes, anything that gets us to survive the day. This is the tablet we use. It's just a simple Amazon Fire, works for us, works for our purposes, and it keeps him very very happy and entertained and calm on our airplane days. If your toddler is more used to using the tablet in everyday life, maybe consider downloading some new stuff, new videos, new games, so that it is fresh and new for them on your airplane day. Number four. For long-haul flights, especially, it is really essential that you have a plan for how your toddler is going to sleep, or at least I feel like this is very important, to at least have a plan. It might not work out, but we plan on getting our toddler to sleep on long-haul flights. Right now what's working for us is this two-part system, I guess. Having a blow-up foot rest for him, which I got on Amazon, and this just blows up on the airplane and shoves under his seat so that it extends his seat a little bit more. He has more surface area to sleep on, and then we make a canopy over this just using a light thin muslin baby blanket. We've also in the past brought our portable sound machine with us. This has helped, although the airplane is kind of its own sound machine. Lullaby baby music off my phone, downloaded Spotify playlists of baby music. This worked especially well when he was younger, when he was a little baby on the airplane. And of course having his lovey, his pacifiers when he was a bit younger, things that I know will soothe him, you know, reading a book to him, even on the airplane, keeping these little simple bedtime routines make him more likely to sleep on long-haul flights, but really the blow-up foot rest. Can't recommend this enough. Number five is going to be easy access to my important stuff without it getting lost. So for me, that means leggings that have side pockets. These are my travel pants. I've talked about these leggings in other videos on this channel. I just, this is what I wear on travel days. I don't wear anything else because I know that my passport, my tickets, and my phone go into the side pockets. They're really easy to get out and I won't lose them. They can't fall out of these pockets. So for me, these are my travel day pants. These are essential. As you may already know as well from other videos, I double this up with a really cool looking fanny pack that has my wallet and my chapstick and my keys and other important stuff that I need to have attached to my body. Traveling with a toddler. It's got to be attached to me. Number six is doggy poo bags and or ziploc bags because I need to have a trash bag at my seat on the airplane at all times because toddlers make a huge mess. I also use these bags to throw our poopy diapers in on travel days so we don't stink up the airport bathroom too bad, too badly. If we have any clothes that get soiled during the travel day, I can just throw them in the ziploc bag. They don't get anything else wet or dirty. It's just a really good idea to travel with extra plastic bags. And finally the last essential on my list is an extra outfit for you and your toddler. Of course your toddler needs extra clothes on a travel day. I like to bring at least one, two, two extra outfits for my toddler and an extra outfit for me usually just something soft and squishy that folds up small and I can throw in my bag, pair of socks, a top and some extra leggings or pajama pants even just to have something that you can change into if there's any sort of emergency at the airport or on the plane where you find yourself with toddler fluids on you. Hope you enjoyed this quick little video guys. Let me know what your travel essentials are for traveling with a toddler down below. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in my next video.