Mummy & Daddy Daycare’s plan for a long-haul flight with two young kids
In a previous post, we joked about how we might need to prepare for an apocalypse when traveling long haul with two young kids to the United Kingdom. While we are almost certain that our two children will have a ball of a time with their cousins once we arrive, we anticipate our biggest challenge to be the 14-hour plane ride there.
We chose to fly Qatar Airways there, in two legs of seven-hour flights and a two-hour stopover at Doha airport. We selected a 9.30pm night flight in the hopes that our four-year-old (nicknamed Barnacles) and 18-month-old (nicknamed Kwazii) would fall asleep soon after takeoff, as their usual bedtime is 7pm.
However, even though we are hopeful that the two will sleep for a good part of the first leg, we are almost certain that they will be awake for a large part of the second. That’s seven full hours with two active young boys – we are tired just thinking about it.
For Barnacles, we are somewhat less worried as at age four, he can likely enjoy some of the in-flight kids’ entertainment such as cartoons or games. We are bringing his personal earphones along, as the airplane ones are probably too large. However, Kwazii can barely sit still for more than 30 minutes at a time and a confined plane seat is hardly ideal.
We’ve therefore spent the last two weeks preparing for how to occupy our two boys during their awake time on the long plane ride. We plan to pack all these items into a large hand-carry duffel bag – our Jujube Starlet.
Here are the 10 items that have gone into our carry-on luggage:
1. Medicine. All our medicine essentials – Paracetamol, Chlorpheniramine, Certirizine, Ibuprofen, Iliadin, saline nose spray etc – are organised in one case so it is easily accessible if necessary.
2. An extra set of clothes for each child, wipes and diapers for our 18-month-old. If there’s something we’ve learnt, it is to always pack a set of clothes when you have kids. We might even put two sets in.
3. A jacket and small rolled up swaddle blanket for each child, as we are extremely reluctant to let them use the airline’s blankets – who knows when they’ve last been washed?
4. First Class travel pillow. Barnacles already has the JetKids Bedbox which we hope will keep him comfortable throughout the flight, but as Kwazii doesn’t have his own seat, we got an inflatable pillow option to be placed at Mummy’s seat. We hope that being comfortable means they will stay asleep longer.
5. Snacks. Lots of snacks. We are packing more snacks than we think we will need, because with young children, somehow you never have enough!
6. Crayola Mess-free colouring markers and paper – as we don’t want to have to rub marker lines off the airplane windows and seat backs.
7. Tomy battery-powered Gearation fridge magnets. This was a recent find and we are quite excited about this as we think these magnetic moving gears are likely to occupy them for a while on the plane. We packed a flat magnetic letter board to stick the gears on so the kids can have fun arranging them and moving them around.
8. Small board books. Both kids love books (Kwazii loves to flip pages, Barnacles loves being read to).
9. Lego stickers. We got these for free a while back with a purchase, and stickers occupy our kids for a considerable amount of time so we are hopeful these will, too.
10. One toy car for each kid – with doors that can open as Kwazii adores opening and closing toy vehicle doors.
After all that preparation, we are crossing our fingers and hoping that both kids will be comfortable and as well rested as can be expected throughout the flight – but if there’s one thing we can safely say for sure, it’s that both Mummy and Daddy will definitely not be getting much sleep. Hopefully some of these ideas help you on your next holiday!
Mummy and Daddy Daycare are the pseudonyms of a Singaporean husband and wife who are raising two young boys aged four and one, nicknamed Barnacles and Kwazii from the children’s Octonauts series. Get into the minds of this couple who describe parenthood as a lifetime adventure – you are always learning something new! Whoever said parenting was a walk in the park?
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