Traveling with Twins

This week's question on the Multiples and More blog is all about travel.

What are your best tips for traveling with multiples?

My #1 fun thing to do ever is to travel (Yes, it wins over reading!). Pre-twins, my husband and I traveled quite a bit both home and abroad. There is nothing that gets me as jazzed up about life as planning trips and taking that journey.

But now that the twins have arrived, I'm sad to say that we haven't done much travel and have limited our vacations to driving trips once a year. The thought of bringing all of our twin gear on a plane seriously scared me as I'm the type of person to pack everything. That's all about to change though now that the twins are getting older. I have our travel plans planned out for the next 10 years.

For our first trip with the twins, when they turned 2, we drove an hour away from our home and vacationed in Western Massachusetts. We figured we were far enough away from home to feel like vacation and close enough in case anything went wrong or we forgot something and had to go back. Luckily, we did not have to come home although the first day was rough because our hotel room wasn't ready until 5pm!! My cranky toddlers were not happy to have to skip their nap. We like to keep them on the same schedule on vacation and home.

Since then we've taken 2 more trips and although I packed well the first time I learned a few tricks along the way that I'll share. If nothing else, I'm a list maker and that especially includes when I'm getting ready for a trip. My lists have come in handy over the years and keeps me on schedule. Here are some important items from my travel list.


#1. Bring GARBAGE BAGS. If you've got two kids in diapers, you will quickly fill up whatever trash receptacle is available in your room. Even if your twins are older, you'll still be amazed at how much trash accumulates while on vacation.

#2. Bring disposable sippy cups if your twins use them. I found some great disposable cups at our supermarket for our last trip. Use once and toss them. For the previous trips, I brought a small bucket, dish soap, and a towel so I could rinse out their cups for the next day. Trust me, that's the last thing you want to be doing at the end of a long vacation day.

#3. Bring a book light. We usually just get 1 hotel room so when our kids go to sleep at 7:30 that means lights out for everyone. My husband is happy as a clam to go to bed at 7:30 with them, but I like to stay up with my book light and read.

#4. The first year I brought the pack and plays, but the twins didn't want to sleep in them. So, one of them slept with me and the other slept with daddy. I squeezed the open pack and play in between the two queen beds to act as a bed guard rail. In later years, I took the suitcase rack and put it next to the bed with a suitcase on it (covered with a sheet so they wouldn't be up next to a dirty suitcase) which keeps them from rolling out of the bed. We also bring a huge cooler (remember we've always driven to our destination) and put a suitcase on that too next to the other bed.

#5. Bring breakfast with you. We pack a huge cooler filled with juice and milk. We also go to the supermarket and I let them pick out those individual cereal bowls for breakfast. We pack some yogurt in the cooler too. We eat breakfast in the room and then we buy lunch and dinner out. Don't forget the plastic spoons!

#6. I bring extra tote bags so that I can pack just things that I need for day trips on vacation. And, I pack everything in ziplock plastic bags - like makeup, any liquids, etc... I love the jumbo sized bags and use them for everything. I also bring a smaller cooler to bring with us for the day so that we can leave our large cooler in the hotel room.

Every year I take a photo of what I've packed for the trip. I think it looks less year after year, but I may just be fooling myself.

2007



2008



2009




This year we're taking a big trip to Canada, but still driving (everyone on Twitter convinced us to drive). It's going to be 9 hours of driving to get us there. The most I've ever driven anywhere with or without kids is 4 hours so this will definitely be interesting. I'll be happy to post any tips about driving long distances with twins once I've lived it.

What travel tips with kids would you like to share?