Yay for our first family long haul overseas trip! Butterflies in my tummy now, just planning and thinking about it. =P
actually good and bad butterflies.
good being I get to shop at the outlet stores in Houston & the hubby has promised two full days of shopping *beams*.
bad being…I have no idea what it will be like travelling with a 14 month old on a 23-hour flight to Houston. Obviously we have no idea what we are getting ourselves into, right? Ai. We have been doing some reading about travelling with a child. It helps that the flight out to Houston is a red-eye flight so Ollie should be sleeping most of the time and waking up about 4 hours before we hit our stopover in Moscow, and then falling back asleep again before we hit Houston.
We have a couple of back up plans to entertain him on the flight, namely videos, books, snacks and some toys. I think our carry-on luggage is going to be full of Ollie’s stuff. Well, ideally it should be. Honestly, I do not like the idea of having Ollie glued to the tv/tablet screen for most of the flight. I know it is somewhat okay for adults, but the screen is tiny, the background light is bad and Ollie may not like using the headphones haha. So it should be fun trying to figure that one out.
Thankfully, D has just returned from her trip to the USA and is giving me heaps of tips & advices on travelling. Of course different toddlers work differently, but tips are better than no tips!
Then came the issue of Ollie’s meals. So far, Ollie has been eating rice porridge for lunch & dinner. On a few occasions, Ollie has had what we have for dinner, either rice with some dishes, or noodles. It has worked fine for us, seeing how he has his staples. We haven’t tried Western food for Ollie yet. He has had some pasta & roasted veggies, which is pretty much it. And he doesn’t really think much of pasta. The Asian parent in me emerges and finds it hard to let Ollie have sandwiches, pizza, burgers, fries..etc for meals. That and I do not know how much he will be eating in terms of “rice porridge” and how that will affect him. Previously, it would have been easy cos he could just nurse if he was hungry. We are playing with the idea of bring a small slow cooker & some rice along to cook rice porridge for him just in case.
Dramatic much? Yes, much so. But we are happy to give it a shot, with the rice being a backup, even if it means losing 5kg of baggage allowance. *grumbles* I am sure there is plenty of variety of food for Ollie, and I will end up being the paranoid mother. Maybe I might end up coming up with a list of places to eat at whilst there. Haha.
Less than 3 weeks to go! Yikes!