Maui 2016 - Traveling with a Baby

Who ever found the transit portion of vacationing to be any fun? You basically stand in line for everything - TSA, boarding, baggage, rental car shuttle, rental car renting. But traveling with a baby looks something like this plus all the above. 

Fake smile, tired eyes.

For a video version of this post, you can watch this Vlog I posted on YouTube.

We are less mobile with little one in tow so we arrived at the airport with 2 hours to spare just in case anything went wrong. This meant I got hungry and paid $25 for a small burnt panini with side salad and a cup of juice from Plant Organic. Not at all worth it but it's airport food for ya.

A 6 hour flight later..He actually did pretty well. If no one on the plane realized there's a baby on board, it's a successful flight! 

We didn't get into our AirBnB condo until close to midnight. Phil went to the nearest Safeway and bought some 50% clam poke, spicy salmon poke, and shoyu ahi poke. They're not the greatest but they do the job and we did not get sick. Hooray for half off.

We're Maui ready!

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Here are some things I learned about feeding and packing for a 9 month old on vacation:

1. TSA allows you to bring bottled home made baby food or sealed pre-packaged foods in up to 3.5 oz containers which you declare separately from your toiletries. No one really checked ours so I probably could've brought enough for our whole trip but I only brought a few days' worth.
2. If you're traveling somewhere near a major grocery store chain, like Safeway, they'll probably have baby food and diapers. 
3. I brought a sandwich bag of rice cereal and my pump. Each morning I just pumped some milk (extra before nursing) to mix in with rice cereal. Then I added some fruit puree that I brought or from Safeway.
4. Use containers that have multipurpose. I use Avent bottles with sealing discs to store the food on the plane, then they became the containers I mixed the cereal in too.
5. Buy just enough or less than you need. If you have time in the itinerary to go buy more food, do it. Don't end up with extras that you need to carry back on the plane.
6. I don't check in luggage. Virgin America allowed each person one carry on up to 25lb and one personal bag. Phil carried on a big duffel bag with all adult and baby clothes. He wore a backpack with the bottles, food, toys, diapers, etc baby items. I wore a backpack with all my electronics and I carried on the Pack n' Play. This is how we saved on paying for checked baggage.
7. Virgin allows checking in the stroller and car seat for free.