Tips *you haven’t heard before* from a former full time traveler | traveling with kids

If you're going on a plane, get there a million hours early so you can do security nice and slow. You can stop for all the bathroom breaks. It can be very chill. Then you might be there like an hour or two early and then you just gotta figure out what to do with your time. Hey guys, my name is Shayla. Welcome to my channel. If this is your first time here, I talk about motherhood. I talk about pregnancy. If we do things a little natural, a little granola, a little hippie, I don't know. I have a six month old who's crawling around on the ground and a two year old, two and a half year old. They're getting a little older than that, but they're at the age where I just round up. I just launched shirts. I've got a black on black mama shirt. I've got a Midwest mama shirt and I've got a like National Parks vibe, grow good humans shirt. They're printed on these. They're currently in the printer, but I'm pre-ordering right now. This is a small. Yours will not come with stains. We've got nice long sleeves, very soft, very comfy. The mediums obviously are a little bit bigger. So if you're looking for an oversized fit and you normally wear, I would say size the way you normally would. If you're normally small, get a small, if you have a little oversized fake and a medium large, that's just heyshayla.com slash shop. And then I have Instagram, heyshayla and podcast, heyshayla. Today we are talking about 23 travel tips because it's about to be the holidays and we're traveling. Car trips, plane trips. I've got two other videos. It's like traveling on a plane with your baby and then what to not overpack. We're also fighting time here. It's about to be sunset. So this video is going to just gradually get darker and darker. So let's get popping. This will all be in a blog. So go to heyshayla.com and look up travel tips. Packing. Before I was a mom, I was a full-time traveler. That's how I started my YouTube channel. So some of these things I learned along the way. Some of them are going to be like, these are so obvious and others might melt your brain and they might be the same tip for different people. But outfits, number one is outfits. I used to just be like, I like this shirt. I like these pants. I like these. No, you need to pack outfits because then I would get to my destination and I wouldn't have any outfits. So you do that for yourself. You do that for your children. Tip number two is make lists. This one is give or take. For me, it works really well. So I'll be like, we're going to be gone for seven days. These are the activities we're going to be doing. So first day I need a plain outfit and then I need an extra outfit for everybody in case everybody throws up or blows out or something. Then I need pajamas that night. Then the next day I need a morning outfit, swimsuit, maybe an afternoon outfit and more pajamas. And I kind of just like plan it. I'm a big wear pants multiple times-er, so I'll be like black leggings with the white shirt and then with the gray shirt and maybe a zip up over the top and that's an outfit. Hot tip number three is use packing cubes. This video is sponsored by Trip Travel Gear. They're also full-time travelers. They also have a YouTube channel. Their packing cubes are amazing. They got a few different kinds. I have a full video review of these packing cubes if you're like, tell me more about these. They've got one package that is like a bunch of different colors. This is my favorite. In the green bag is outfit number one, two, and three and the pink bag is my daughter's outfit. These are compression cubes. You can unzip them, give it a little fluff, stuff that sucker full, zip it shut, it compresses it. I'm an expert at making things fit. Seems like the most efficient way. One of their newest things are these. They come in pairs of two. They've got the mesh front. They also have ones where you can put like a name. They also do the compression thing but then on the back they have this sneaky little pocket where you can put dirty clothes. I would be like, my toddler's clothes in the front, my baby's clothes are in the back or my outfits are in the front, my undies are in the back. I call them unmentionables. I would highly recommend packing cubes. They keep things so organized. Pack your outfits. I usually roll them up together. A little OCD maybe but so dang good. And then I'll put them in the packing cubes and then I'll just toss the packing cubes into the suitcase and then when we get there I'll be like, Aaliyah's stuff, mom's stuff. Hot tip, not on the list. If you are gonna check things or carry things on, you're like, oh no, we all have toothpaste. Put all of the toiletry things in one bag and then check that one bag and then everybody else gets to carry on their stuff. I kind of like just having everyone's stuff in one giant bag and then you redistribute when you get there. That way you can just check one bag and everybody can just have it carry on stuff. While you're still at home, start making a packing list. So you have to think about the sleep stuff. So like, are you gonna bring a monitor? Are you gonna bring the sound machine? Think about all the things that you touch when you put them to sleep. Obviously you need diapers. Are you gonna bring the diaper rash cream? Maybe you want a plate or like a utensil set for the kids or maybe you're like, you know what, they can use big ones this time. It's fine. I'm not gonna pack everything. I do recommend with the eating that you get one of those water bottles that has a lid, like a thermos lid, cause then when it's just shoved in the bag on the plane or if it falls, the mouthpiece doesn't touch other things. I don't know. These are all entertainment tips now. So that was all like packing. Now we're on to entertainment. Hot tip number five, tablet. And don't just buy the tablet, buy the headphones because they can't be playing their cartoons out loud on the airplane. The Planktons will come by and be like, get your kids some headphones. So get some age appropriate ones. Screen time limitations out the window. We need our kids focused. We need them zeroed in. Thing number six, you can play the soundtracks of their favorite movie and it works. Like when Aaliyah was obsessed with Cocomelon, we would play Cocomelon in the car and it would drive me absolutely insane, but it worked. She would just be happy listening to it. Tip number seven, new toys. Kids love new toys. They hold their attention very long. A new toy is a relative term. We used Red Solo cups when she was like 10 months old in a plane and she was happy with it. So grab some Popsicle sticks, grab some random, there's things that you can like, is this one of my hot tips? Yeah. Number eight, it's a fidget spinner that you stick to the window so you can stick it to the window, spin that, just let her ride. That's more of a plane thing too. If your kid is older, you can play I Spy. What I always do with Aaliyah when we're in the car, I go, Aaliyah, what do you see outside? She goes, uh, do you see a tree? She goes, yeah. I'm like, oh, do you see an elephant? She'll say, yeah. And I'll go, no. And then she thinks it's hilarious. But if they're older, you can actually play like I Spy, like, oh, who sees a white house? Who sees a, and like talk to them while they're going. And if they're bored, that's okay. Kids can be bored. Mirrors are helpful in the car. Watercolor boards. This is awesome because it's eco-friendly and because there's no mess. So there's a pen or like a little coloring thing that is full of water. So then you have this booklet that it comes with where you can just use this water brush and it makes it colorful and there's no mess. And it just gets reused. It dries and then it reuses again. They also have like doodle boards where you can write on it and then you press a button and it all goes clear. You want to make sure that the things that you bring, you can lose because things will get lost. So if we've got a favorite stuffed animal that we go to bed with, we're going to buy a duplicate or we're going to be like, Hey, this baby needs to stay here to stay safe. But this is our travel baby. And if you lose it, you lose it. But you just need to make sure that, cause that really releases a lot of stress. If you bring like the only baby that she will sleep with and you lose it, it's gone. Okay. Number 12, give yourself some freaking extra time. If you're going on a plane, get there a million hours early so you can do security nice and slow. You can stop for all the bathroom breaks. It can be very chill. Then you might be there like an hour or two early and then you just gotta figure out what to do with your time during that time. Maybe bring some like painter's tape and do like a little hopscotch on the ground. That was just off the cuff. Just came up with that right now. Or if you're in the car, I've heard of people taking four hour trips that take like nine hours. So give yourself some time to stop for bathroom breaks to stop just to get on the stretch. You should be stopping every two hours. Tip number 13, plan your travel around the naps. So if you're going for a long car ride, I would suggest leaving around the start of the nap so that they can do most of the napping in the car. If you're planning a plane ride, also do that around nap time so that they hopefully sleep in the car. Didn't work for us. We did a plane ride. She did not sleep on the plane. Car rides usually work. Cause it's just, the car is just like mmmmm. And familiar. Planes are also mmmm, but they're very unfamiliar. There are like a million ways to get white noise without a white noise sound machine. So there's an iPhone hack that you can do. You can get a Spotify playlist. Sometimes I just turn the air on in the car real loud. Sometimes I open the windows a little bit. There's lots of ways to get white noise. And the car itself just has a lot of white noise and so does the plane. If you're traveling in a car, hot tip number 15 is to bring a potty. You have no idea how, we have just pulled over on the side of the road, opened up the front door, the back door, there's our little like cove that we put the potty down in and she goes potty. Right there. It's wonderful. Definitely recommend it. Gets a little complicated when you then have to drive away with poop in your car. But you'll manage. And tip number 16 is put those little like shade things on the windows so when the sun comes in nice and hot, babes can still have like a little bit of shade and are not too too hot. If you can't tell, I've got my list over here that I keep referencing and referring to. If you're traveling in a plane, apparently the safest way for them to travel is in a car seat. Kind of makes sense. Kind of sounds insane. And Seth was like, we're not bringing a car seat on the plane. I've never seen that before. And I was like, you clearly do not follow safe in the seat on Instagram because she says that that's the way to do it. And I have a couple of friends that have done it and they're like, it is a B word to get that car seat on the plane. But once it's on, they sit there because they know what to do in a car seat. They just sit there. They know they can't get out. And it is a really safe place for them to be. And you don't have to have them on your seat, but you do have to buy an extra seat for them, for them. If they're little, like if I was going to travel with Ezzie, I would for sure put her in a carrier. I think I put Aaliyah at a year and a half in her carrier. So nice. Cause then as you're getting on and off the plane, you have your hands free. You can still do things. You can touch the seats as you walk down the aisle. You just, you have your hands. It's really nice. Bring a carrier. I use Secura, Secura Bloom UnBohemo. It's amazing cause it's so minimal. So it's like, there's not like a bunch of wrapping and craziness. Tip number 19. I kind of referenced this before. On your carry-on, bring extra clothes for your baby in case they have a blowout or they spit up on themselves or they spill on themselves. And for you. Nobody thinks about that. Nobody thinks about bringing clothes for mom. You all need extra clothing. And then try and get yourself a friendly breastfeeding top for multiple reasons. A, you want to breastfeed your baby on the way up and on the way down. If you're not a breastfeeding mom, you want to get a bottle or a nook or some food, anything that's going to like get them swallowing that will help with ear pressure a lot. I breastfed my baby with one of those muslin covers. I tucked it into the tray in front of me, draped it over our heads, and then I had like this little place where I breastfed my baby. It was fantastic. It kind of helped them to not be distracted by everything. We got a little privacy. At the time, you were wearing masks on planes, I don't know if you still are, and I took my mask off and just breathed in that little cove that I had made. Hot tip number 22 is sleep when they get there. So people swear by slumber pods. We co-sleep, so we don't use slumber pods, but I can see where they would be very helpful because you just stick your baby in there, it's all nice and dark, and then they get to sleep. Some people put their kids in the bathroom because that's the darkest place, but then they have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and they're like, didn't think about this. And then hot tip number 23 is also the California Beach Go. So the pack and plays are gnarly. They're so heavy. They're so big. They're so bulky. I don't know, maybe I have a crazy one, but mine is so hard to set up. The California Beach Go, I also have a video showing you how easy it is to pop up, pop down. It's super light. It's just pretty great, so I'd recommend it for them sleeping in it or just for the beach or containing them if you're going to a friend's house, you want to keep them in a spot. It worked for when they were this little, but then it also, I just went camping with it and my two and a half year old loved it. It was like their own place to play. Okay. My first never made noises like that. I kind of love it. So the sun is set. I'm going to go try and get her to sleep. I think usually she gets chatty like this when she's tired. Thank you guys all for being here. I hope this was helpful. Check out the blog if you want to actually see these things listed out and I'll see you guys next time. Bye.