Traveling with kids can be a wondrous experience or a miserable slog -- and it's often both, on the same trip. It pays to be prepared, so we've gathered road-tested wisdom from moms around the country about what to expect (and how to have a good time anyway).
1) You'll wish you could teleport directly to your destination.
It's unclear which is worse: strapping down a small, antsy person (whose idea of torture is prolonged immobility) for a long car ride, or taking a small, antsy person with sensitive, recently infected ears on a plane packed with strangers. If only you could beam yourselves there -- or rent a vacation home five minutes from your house. Since you can't do that:
* Make the most of car trips. Driving is generally less fraught than flying because you can always pull over and you can travel at night or during naptime. Take lots of kids' CDs. Pearl Yu of Menlo Park, California, discovered that on a road trip from California to New York and back again, her daughter, Avery, then 5, also liked listening to a homemade tape of her mom reading stories. "I recorded myself at bedtime for a few days, and then I taped Avery singing songs and talking, which she loved," Yu says.
* Take along plenty of new toys. Kim Peltzer of Frederick, Maryland, goes to the dollar store before each trip to stock up for her kids, twins Nick and Alex, 10; Stephen, 4; and Sarah, 2. "Don't tell them ahead of time that you have a bunch of new stuff," she says. To buy extra time, wrap each treat (use tinfoil if you can't be bothered with tape) and dole them out at intervals. I use the term "toy" loosely, by the way. Include the basics, like crayons and paper, but don't overlook the mundane. One miraculous time, my 18-month-old son, Zander, unscrewed and rescrewed the lid on an empty plastic makeup jar for the entire two hours we were stuck on the runway in a thunderstorm. Over the years, my kids have been equally entranced by masking tape, magnets and paper clips, a wee measuring tape, birthday candles to stick in a Silly Putty "cake," a small spray bottle filled with water, and a cloth for "cleaning" the car window.
* If you fly, look into getting a direct flight. You don't want to end up like Parenting staffer Andrea Messina, zigzagging through the Dallas/Fort Worth airport with a double stroller, three car seats, two huge carry-ons, a 4-year-old, and 22-month old twins, trying to make a connection to San Francisco. "We did, barely, but we swore then and there never, ever to do that again," says Messina.
On the other hand, direct flights can be pricey, so if it's not possible, allow extra time for connections. Try to avoid a layover coinciding with naptime so your child can burn energy racing around the airport (and snooze on the plane).
* Buy a ticket for your so-called lap child. Before my older son turned 2 -- the age when you're required by law to buy your child his own seat -- I played the odds, and if there wasn't an empty seat in my row, by the time I came down the aisle with Zander, there would be. (Flying with kids gives you a decent idea of what it was like to be a leper in 14th-century Europe.) But planes tend to overbook these days, and "lap child" isn't simply a figure of speech. If you can handle someone stomping on your thighs for the duration, fine; if not, just pay for a seat. The good news is that many airlines will deeply discount the fare for kids under 2; American Airlines, for instance, charges half the full fare.
* Use your stroller in the airport to restrain your child as you dig your boarding passes out of the diaper bag or as an impromptu luggage cart once you arrive. "Take it right up to the gate -- they'll check it for you and have it waiting on the jetway when you land," says Kim Peltzer.
* Master in-transit diaper changes. Before you leave, practice the lap change (or for toddlers, the kid-standing-up change) so you can manage nonpoopy diapers at your seat.
