Summer travels & international move - advice needed!

[kyleian]

Not sure if this is in the right place, but it seemed the best fit.

We're looking ahead to summer vacation followed a month later by a long car trip and move overseas. I know we'll have re-training to do after both but we're hoping to get through it with as little APOP as possible. So looking for lots of advice as I plan our trips!
Thankfully we should be able to keep our routine just fine through all of it except the time change. She will be 8 months for the first trip, and 9.5-10 months for the second.

1. First & second stop the only issue will be light. LO likes it dark to sleep, and unless we bring our blackout curtains and figure out a way to put them up we won't have that. So i'm thinking of trying now to increase light little by little. Any thoughts?

2. Second stop is camping so any tips there would be great.

3. Third stop will be light + sleeping not in the pack n play. She may be napping on a closet floor barricaded with a suitcase. I'll probably APOP one of those naps each day though.

Then we go home and recover for a month.

4. We're driving from SoCal to Idaho. I'll have a friend with me for most of it since DH wont be with us. The current plan is to drive about 7 hours a day, stopping about every 2, with a few days of less driving to see friends and be tourists. We plan on stopping by about 6 pm so LO can go to bed normally. That means naps in the car. Is it better to do that so she gets a full night? Is 7 hrs too much for a 10 month old? Should we not plan on stopping early but have her go to bed in the car? Any ideas on entertaining a 10 month old in the car? How do we transition from play to naps in the car?

5. Then a few weeks later we fly out to Tokyo. I've never done a time change that direction, so don't know where to begin to prepare LO.

6. The 12 hour flight! Just me and her, but she does have her own seat. Tips? I plan on having audiobooks for me so I don't get bored keeping her occupied, probably up and down the aisle whenever possible.

[creations]

Sorry you didn't get any replies yet. Giving you a bump, hope you get some ideas soon

[Mama2boys]

Hey, I will tackle the last as we do a 1 hr time shift every year for vacation.

My rules are to just go with the flow and accept the first week or even 10 days there will be no fixed pattern, but I try and coax the children into a pattern and I do that with normalizing meal times. so when we get to India the kids are completely off and they will get hungry in the middle of the night and I just give them a light snack instead of a full meal, and then give them a bfast when its bfast time or lunch if they have slept through. so let the meals follow the clock.

I also start reducing the naps, so they will fall asleep about 3/4 in the afternoon and I will give them a short nap and a later dinner. sometimes you have to have late nights due to late naps till you can bring it back to normal. hope this is making sense. once the wake up in on time/schedule that works for you, the rets can be put into place slowly...

[kyleian]

Thank you! That's really helpful.
We've started trying to add some light to her naps, which has been going pretty well so far.

[Jaime]

I didn't start skipping time zones until my kids were just a couple years older than that, but I found that trying to get into my routine on the new time ASAP was most helpful.  Now, it certainly didn't work perfectly the first couple of days; we might have an extra catnap and/or an adjusted bedtime, but the kids almost seemed better at adjusting to jet lag than the adults!   

As far as the road trip goes... 7 hrs/day is probably my outer limit with a child that small, and it will work if she can fall asleep in the car.  I do agree with you; it's better for her to get a good sleep at night in a nice dark room.

additionally, there are lots of other ideas & tips here:
Staying on track with LO's routine while traveling

[kyleian]

Thank you so much! I'd read a lot of that before but reviewed it.
It's also good to have a bit more confirmation of our plan.
She's been sleeping decently when I leave the bathroom light on - enough to see color and faces in the room, so hopefully we'll make that work, too.