Long haul with 2 little ones?

[diesellisle]

Quoll,

My OH has that T-shirt...........(he really does!)...lol! Would you be available to escort our three for a reasonable price? If not, we were thinking of industrial strength glue or a large rope to keep two of the three under control and out of mischief!

Happy travels everyone :)

[Rorrisons]

Originally Posted by toughspiders

Hiya

I know how you feel. Mine will be 2 and 4 when we travel!!!(hopefully)

Molly is an absolute nightmare. She has a mind of her own. Not a child that will stay still. No way will she sit and be still and be entertained she wuill want to be up and about and OFF!!!!
I have no doubts that she will try and open the emergency exit doors!!
Im absolutely dreading it!!!!!

Bex

I have a 21 month old daughter exactly the same, she is such a good girl BUT not an easy child and hates to be restricted and sit on my knee and keep still for more than 2.5 seconds. Wish me luck, we travel mid April to Perth via Singapore. Will make sure that I take plenty of new little toys and stickers, she loves stickers.

[suzy+1]

I was worried about the 25 hour flight with 1 hour stop over with my 3 year old-but i need'nt have been. I packed a million toys into as much hand luggage as i could manage (or not as the case was!) and not once did she get something out to play with on the whole 25 hours.I would say she slept for half of it, watched the kids TV programmes (very good in flight entertainment for little ones) and they seem to feed you every 5 minutes on those long haul flights???she was given a free bag with lots of colouring things and puzzles etc on the 2nd part of the flight and that kept her entertained. I wish i had left the hand luggage at home!

[Angelcake]

I've got twin 2 yr old boys and a 4 yr old boy, all typical boisterous, can't sit still, lets rough and tumble and sword fight kinda guys!

24 hrs on a plane is going to be hell for everyone involved - agggggggggggggghhhhhhh!! Especially those people sat near us!!

A

[crafty1]

Sorry i haven't been on for a while, the comp was sent to Melbourne ahead of me, i seriously considered bribing the packers to add the kids to the box, but thought customs might have something to say!

We made the trip on the 17th of march and i have to say, the kids were amazing!
We left 'home' at 4:30 am on the monday, flew from gatwick at 10am, landed in Dubai at 5pm, flew out of Dubai at midnight to singapore for an hours stop and then landed in melbourne at 2:30pm tues (all uk times), which was 1:30 am on the wednesday in melbourne!

i really needn't of worried, i had brought the kids nintendo ds's a month before and they spent most of the time playing on those, am currently weening them off the flaming things!!

they only slept from dubai to singapore, mummy really didn't sleep at all, i wish i was small enough to curl up on those seats!

so what i should have been more worried about was me, i was sooooo bored and tired, that I was the cranky one and just couldn't wait to get off the plane!

the thought of doing the journey again any time soon is a definit no-no, but not because of the kids, because i don't want to!!

good luck everyone still planning the trip, just don't get too stressed about the kids, worry about how you're going to cope being on the plane for soooo long!!

[gary12]

We took our boys 4 and 19mths earlier this year. My youngest is a nightmare and doesn't sit still for a nano second. I took all the toys, food, sticker books even portable dvd players for them to have on the plane and you know after 5 flights they came back unopened. They were darlings, on every single flight someone commented on how good they were (v. proud mummy).

We got a 6pm flight from LHR to Singapore. After the initial excitement and their dinner they settled down and had a sleep, then we had a transit hotel at Singapore for 8 hrs where my OH and I took turns to sleep whilst the other took the boys to the playground (thanks for that advice Cal) then after a freshen up and a meal we got on the plane to Melbourne. They fell asleep on take off and we had to wake them up to get off the plane.

We did a similar thing on our return but had to let them sleep at Singapore. We just walked up and down with them and wore them out.
With regards Jet lag I think it took about 4 days outbound then amazingly on our return they went to bed at 10pm and slept through til 7am. The following night the youngest woke once but went back off so there was no jet lag at all.

One thing we did use at the airport and I tell everyone to take who has kids is an inflatable beach ball that they can kick about in departures. They don't bounce as such, they don't hurt if they hit someone and it is really hard to kick them too far. Also, you just deflate it and pop in your bag until you need it again.

I had nightmares about the flights, hopefully you will be surprised and have an easy time. Failing that hit the bar!

Michelle

[Quoll]

See, what did I tell you all!!!! So glad that you all had easy flights! (well, as easy as any 24 hour flight is)

[nomad]

Great tips

Will some of this work on Adults , as the wife can't sit still for 5mins. I am dreading 25hours