logo

Most of the traveling I do with my nieces and nephews are during family trips, when their parents (my siblings) are with us, too. So I get to spend a lot of time with them, which is fabulous, but I'm not completely responsible for everything they do. As my nieces and nephews get older (I have 9, with the oldest being 8), I would love to do more one-on-one traveling with them, even just day trips here and there.

My only travel experience with my niece was taking the place of my brother-in-law to accompany my sister and 6-month-old niece to a family wedding across the country (he had to work, the lucky guy!)

Low point: Flying with a 6-month-old on a cross country flight. Painful doesn't even begin to describe it. I will never, ever get upset at a mom unable to quiet her child on a flight again!

High point: Dancing and singing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun with my niece and my sister at the reception (to be quickly joined by all of our female cousins and their kids!)

I'm hoping to get more travel time with my niece as she gets older - there's a lot more memories to be made!

In November, for my cousin's wedding, I had my first out of town adventure with my niece (age 2) and nephew (age 4)... and mommy, daddy, grandma, and grandpa. While my parents were bummed that we were not staying at the hotel where everyone else was... staying at the hotel with the indoor pool made the trip AWESOME (to quote my nephew). Now... if we could have convinced my niece to sleep at night...

I have never got a chance to travel with them, not only because they're to young but they also live kind of far from me.. oh well, as soon as they can run, this auntie will be ready .. :)

I've traveled with several of my nieces at varying ages. Most stressful was taking one of them by plane to meet her parents in Orlando - their vacation was already in progress. She was 8 or so at the time, and I'd never been responsible for a child while traveling before. Wouldn't you know it, I got pulled over while boarding the plane for a random wanding. Great, now I have to obey the wander while keeping an eye on the kid. It was an eye-opener for me; showed me that the TSA really doesn't consider stuff like that, traveling alone with a kid you're responsible for the last thing you really need is to be distracted. I could just picture the phone conversation. Hello, brother? I just lost your kid because I had to take my eyes off her due to random wanding, and now she's gone..... It was very stressful!

I find that around age 16, they make GREAT traveling companions. I've taken them to Disney, to Sanibel Island, out of state to watch figure skating competitions... they really just dig spending the time with me, it doesn't really matter what we're doing.