Hey! I'm Dani.
I’m that pink-haired, tattooed mama who used to think that traveling with kids meant one thing: Disneyland. And, okay look don’t shoot me… but that’s not really my idea of fun.
Traveling the world – getting out there and immersing yourself in other cultures and places – that was for adults. Adults with lots of disposable income, flexible work schedules, and no dependents. Right?
I grew up in a family that did not travel, except sometimes to the other side of the state.
But then, during grad school, I won a trip to South Africa. Crazy, right?
This was my first real travel experience, and I made the most of it. During that trip, steeped in culture shock and reeling from a terrifying experience my first day there, I realized that travel was not about pretty pictures and passport stamps. It wasn’t a fun luxury for the rich. My world was changed by the experience of being on my own in a completely different place, and I suddenly understood what travel does for people. Why it is a priority for people.
So, since then, I have made it a priority. My husband and I have been together to over 30 countries, some of them several times. We sacrifice in other areas to make sure that we can travel. But we always assumed that would end when we had kids.
We took a big “final” trip during my first pregnancy. Then another “final” trip when she was still a young baby, easy to keep track of. Then another. Then one more before having a second baby, which certainly would make travel too hard, right?
Nope. Traveling with little kids turned out to not only be possible, but to be incredibly enriching – for us, and for them. And while I know that my daughters are not going to remember the amazing memories that we have made, I believe that they are building an underlying flexibility and sense of adventure that they would not have without these massive upheavals to their day-to-day lives.
They are also seeing a lot of people who are not just like them, and while they might not understand the power of that yet, I hold onto hope that such an experience will seep into their souls.
The way it has into my own.
Not everything about traveling with babies or toddlers is easy. I decided to start this blog after searching yet again for the kind of real-world travel advice that I needed for our next adventure. The kinds of things that I had learned the hard way about every place we’d visited, but couldn’t seem to find without hunting through endless pages of decade-old forums on TripAdvisor.
I wanted a trusted voice who had traveled with kids to the places I planned to visit, so that I could skip the guessing game about things like breastfeeding in public. Or bringing car seats in taxis. Or cultural expectations around bringing babies to restaurants. The kinds of things that you don’t find in a guide book!
And that’s when I realized that maybe I could be that voice for somebody else, and this blog was born.
I hope that you find what you’re looking for here. My intention is to give you a mix of location-specific advice (like this post covering what you should know before traveling to Italy with a toddler or baby), general family travel advice (like how to survive flying with a baby), and inspiring photos and stories of our travels around the world (like this photojournal of a day in Kuala Lumpur).
If you would like to follow along with us, join my email list for tons of tips about traveling with a baby, or check out my Instagram below if you’d really rather just enjoy the pretty pictures.
Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you find everything you are looking for here!