A lot of parents shy away from taking a vacation with an infant or toddler for the mere fact of thinking it won’t be an enjoyable experience.  Won’t in be too stressful traveling with a toddler? Why spend all the money when you can’t even do everything?  Why put yourself through the stress?  Wait until they’re older they all say – they’re too little to remember it.  In fact, in preparing to plan our first vacation with our daughter, a co-worker pretty much thought I was crazy. Well, I have the magic secret to making it the best experience possible….

Don’t go it alone and travel with another couple who has a child similar in age.  We decided to go with our good friends who also have a daughter just a few months older than ours.  They’re two of our best friends and we think our girls are on their way to being besties now too. What do we have to lose we thought. At least we’d all be in this crazy adventure together. So the planning to Clearwater Beach, Florida went underway.

If capturing adorable beach pictures of two little tikes isn’t enough convincing for you, let me tell you why I advocate for joint vacation.

1. Friends are fun.  They just are.  And we’ve known this particular couple for years. In fact, the husbands grew up together since they were just little tikes. So we knew we’d enjoy their company, have similar interests and travel well together.  We knew not having a good time wasn’t an option.
2. The kiddos made each other calmer if you can believe that.  They fed off of each other and had a little playmate throughout the week, giving the mommies and daddies some actual relaxation.  Each day the girls were excited and ready to go in their strollers. They’d actually sit in them in the living room while we got ready anxiously waiting to see what we were doing that day.
3. Date Nights!  When traveling alone with your tike you can’t just leave them at the hotel, resort or condo all by their lonesome. And while some resorts have babysitting services, I myself just wouldn’t be comfortable with that. So we had dates all throughout the week.  The dads golfed. The moms shopped. Both us had an evening out with our spouse. And the girls stayed content with someone to entertain them and let them enjoy their vacation too.
4. It’s cheaper. And who can argue with that?  Rather than paying for a condo all by yourself, you have the opportunity to spend less and split the cost of a two or three bedroom condo.  It was actually cheaper to rent a nice condo with a pool for the week with another couple than it would have been to stay in a standard hotel room just us.  And a condo made naps and meals that much easier.  Did I mention you also split the cost of lots of groceries???

Honestly, the vacation couldn’t have gone any better. I do think they were at a prime age for this though and that was really in our favor for the week.   At just 15 months, our daughter was old enough to really experience what we were doing, but still young enough not to fight any of it.  She sat nicely in her stroller, she still took afternoon naps and the craze of non-stop breastfeeding was well behind us (I’m guessing this would have been a much different vacation if she had still be a breastfeeding infant!).

Airport Selfie! First Group Photo

Goodbye Clearwater Beach! Last Group Photo

So in my book traveling with one year old was bliss (minus the plane ride from hell but read more about that here).  I also now know from experience that traveling with a two year old may not be all sunshine and rainbows (read about vacation #2 here).

So there you have it. Find your best couple and make it happen. You won’t regret it. You will have some roadblocks and an imperfect vacation at times. But you’ll have some great memories. Our daughter still takes out the photo book from that trip and sits down with me to “read it.”

Happy Travels to You!