Hi, UrbanDaddy here. Remember me? Oh…
I’ve been neglecting the dad-blogosphere lately. Too busy with the kids, haha!
In the last two months, theUrbanDaddy family has been on holiday – a classic mistake, as any fool-with-kids-who-still-drool knows. Interestingly, the fools may be wrong – our holiday was great. Coming home was where we messed up.
Because that’s when we inadvertently pressed our youngest daughter’s ‘reset’ button. The invisible, intangible hair-trigger that opens the trap-door beneath your life, just as it is settling into a post-partum routine. Such sleeping habits as we’d managed to get her into evaporated in one careless 600-mile home-leg. We ended our holiday with a 5 month-old newborn; unwell, unsettled, up screaming half the night. The four weeks that have passed since we returned have been devoted to weathering the storm, and not much else.
Still, the blogosphere waits for no man, so I’ve written a list-blog (I know, I know).
Here are TheUrbanDaddy’s five top tips for making big trips with small children.
- Don’t (see reset button, above).
- Never drive in one day what you could drive in two. You might be enjoying the scenery but your kid feels like she’s being kettled by the Met Police.
3. It’s not food, it’s crowd control. Food-based bribes are an essential parenting tool. Doubly so in a car.
4 Don’t waste nap-time. Put the miles in while they’re asleep.
5. Parents need spare clothes, too! One of your children will vomit on you. Probably at the start of a long ferry crossing.
The Urban Daddy 