routines whilst on holiday?

[csemum]

I am leaving to go away for two months. I will be staying with my parents in France. Before I had my daughter, I envisioned beautiful sunny days with her sitting beside me at a lunch time cafe, maybe coming out in the evening and snoozing as I ate my steak frites and then swimming and napping in the day.

Now that I have HAD my daughter, I have realised the benefits to her of having a routine. We have (whisper it incase I jinx it) a really lovely routine going on at home and she gets lots of naps in and sleeps reasonably well at night. The only thing is, the routine means that I spend a lot of time inside whilst she naps and means that by 7 she's in bed so unlike the early weeks when my DH and I took her out with us, she needs someone with her.

The question is... do I break the routine whilst I'm out there so she can properly experience France (my parents say the restaurants are full of babies her age and younger) or do I do something which my heart says no to but my head thinks makes sense which is to stick to her routine even if it means staying home more than I'd like.

Why not combine them? Do your normal evening routine, but put her to bed in her pushchair so once she's asleep you can wheel her out when you go for dinner. While she's little (you don't say how old she is, but I imagine she's under a year), you can get away with it, and she's probably sleep serenely on, maybe only needing some milk to get her back off if she wakes when you transfer her back to her cot.

Or go for early dinner with her and push her bedtime back an hour or so? That would probably work too.

What BigBadBear said. If you have a good bedtime routine it'll work wherever you are when they're little. I just got back from holiday and we took my 6 mo DS out every night with us. I did his usual bath (in this case shower/ top and tail), PJs, feed and story, bed routine and he slept soundly lying flat an cozy in his buggy. Pushing my DS's bedtime back an hour wouldn't work - he'd ruin the meal by getting over tired and crabby! But i'm pretty lucky he'll generally sleep in his cot, buggy or car seat. I understand the importance of routine and consistency for little ones, but also believe they need to learn to be flexible on occasions and have never believed in putting my life totally on hold.