Travel lessons learned: visiting the US with a baby
The whole of life is a learning experience, they say. Travelling with a baby certainly is. So here’s my lessons learned from my latest trip to America as we visited Minneapolis.
US Travel lesson 1: If you turn the basic wooden highchairs (in most restaurants) upside down, it makes a perfect base for a car seat.
This is a design feature, incidentally, rather than us discovering it by some peculiar trial and error.
Obviously test first, but Minnie sat happily by the table in her car seat at just the right height during brunch, when I doubt she’d have been as comfortable in the highchair itself.
US Travel lesson 2: US nappy sizes are different from the UK, even if the brand is the same. For example, Pampers size 3 is for 16 to 28lbs (rather than 9-12lbs).
Also, I am apparently incapable of working out how many nappies Minnie needs for a day, let alone a week, so I am permanently transporting them back and forwards in suitcases. But that’s my personal ineptitude.
US Travel lesson 3: It’s not uncommon to find changing tables in the men’s toilets, especially in shopping malls etc, so there’s really no excuse for dads not to change the explosive nappy when you’re out and about.
US Travel lesson 4: The US is very baby-friendly – malls and attractions often have strollers to rent, one café we found had three different kinds of high chair/booster seat.
Even Downtown Minneapolis sushi restaurant Nami Sushi described itself as kid-friendly (and with a special martini list, pretty mummy-friendly too).
US Travel lesson 5: If you buy a cute stuffed jingly frog toy from children’s clothes store Gymboree for a couple of dollars in the sale, buy two. Or three.
Because then, when your daughter chucks it out of the buggy when you’re not looking the following day, you don’t have to scour all the other branches in the area for replacement froggies.
US Travel lesson 6: American babies apparently have shorter legs – at least, the nine-month leggings we bought at Target (for a whopping $1.50 while browsing nappies, food and formula) are already too short for my eight-month-old.
Even taking into account the fact that Minnie has surprisingly long legs for her age. Sadly not inherited from me.
Image: Depositphotos
Definitely good advice to have several of the same toy if your child likes it. We’ve started doing that after our son lost his favorite Snoopy.
Thanks – especially as we can’t easily pick up another without a trip to the US again (and as it’s last year’s line, probably not even then!). Am going to guard this frog almost as much as I do my daughter…