First Holiday with Toddler

[minemine1989]

Hello,

soon we’ll be going on our first holiday with our Toddler and I’m just looking for any and all advice for holidaying with a 18 month old.

we’ll be going to France so anything I need to avoid or look out for. E.g. is he fine drinking their milk?

we’re driving so we could take our own nappies but do you think we’d be better off getting nappies while we’re rhere?

any tips and advice for keeping him safe in the sun and heat? He refuses to wear a hat at the moment.

basically anything you might think would be useful!

thank you!!

My advice is don’t go on holiday with an 18 month old 😂. It’s truly the hardest age to travel with.

Personally I thought the nappies we bought in Menorca were rubbish, so we took a load of our own on a more recent holiday, even though they took up lots of space.

I’m pretty cautious of sun. I checked the UV index each day then tried to limit our outdoor time during the parts of the day that were highest UV. Luckily for a child on one nap a day those things are likely to coincide. Get long sleeved swimming gear / rash vest type things with UV protection.

Consider what you’re doing about evening meal. If eating out, remember they eat later in Europe and like to make it a drawn out affair!

Don’t have overly high expectations. It’ll mainly be like a family day at home, just in a different location. But also try to do things you’ll enjoy, because you’ll remember the holiday but DC won’t.

Take some small favourite toys or ones that can be used in different ways e.g. we take stacking cups because they don’t take up much space, can be used for water play, sand etc as well as just plain stacking.

Have fun 😎

Sun suit, shade for buggy, people in France have babies too so you can buy everything there😁 honestly, chill, it will be fine

Remember a lot of restaurants in France close in the afternoon until evening - we found it hard to eat out as toddler was napping over lunchtime and tired again by 7pm. Better to go self catering.

Unless you’re driving and have loads of space in the car then I’d buy nappies there. They have pampers in France if you’re particular about your brand. Milk is mostly UHT so he may not like the taste. But at 18 months it doesn’t really matter because eating yoghurt and drinking water is the same nutritionally. France doesn’t get THAT hot so I wouldn’t stress about the hat. Just do lunch in the shade, then nap in the shade or indoors and you miss the hottest part of the day entirely.

You can get fresh milk in most places in France these days unless you’re in a tiny village with only one not very good shop.
I don’t like UHT milk and have never had any problems in recent years in getting fresh.

And France can close down on Mondays!
(Not large supermarkets though.)

Nappies were incredibly expensive - nothing equivalent to supermarket own prices that we found, even in Aldi. If you’ve got the car just take a load. We only needed to buy one pack and DH grumbled a lot. If you’re staying in a villa or gite or similar, take a paddling pool so you don’t have to be getting in and out of the main pool if there is one.

French children’s clothes run quite small, so if you’re buying for the future I would size up generously.

Agree with @QueenOfWeeds nappies are so expensive in France, bring as many as you can. And wet wipes. I ran out once and have never made that mistake again!