travel the world with my son

Someday, I want to show my son… The world…

We had a family holiday in Spain and our son enjoyed it immensely. We discovered that he loves swimming and paddling around in a pool, so that’s where we spent most of our holiday too.

The airports in Spain are amazingly well equipped for kids, I totally fell in love with the playroom in Madrid airport. Hoping to go back soon!

The baby’s first trip went so well, as did the first half of the second one, but now he’s caught the flu, just two days before we’re due to fly back home. He doesn’t have fever but his nose is very stuffy, and I’m worried that his ears might hurt during the take-off or the landing. We’ve done our best to prevent the flu escalating to an ear or chest infection, and he’s taken it all like the wonderful, brave little man he is.

The baby’s father has been adding holidays and destinations on our travel list, he wants to take him to France in August and we’ve been talking about going to Reykjavik to see my friend once she moves over and gets herself settled there. We’ve already booked tickets to come back to Finland to see the midnight sun in July, but all I can think about it getting him home safe first.

The bags are packed, the dummy and the gummy sterilised, Eeyore is hanging half out from my handbag-turned-changing bag, new batteries in the camera, flight reservation number scribbled on a piece of red paper, two passports to look after, one purse for pounds and one for euros, perfume bottle in the hard-cover suitcase to prevent any accidents, an umbrella, three hats for every weather, goats’ cheese-asparagus-pancetta quiche cut into bitesized squares for extreme comfort, spare contact lenses in the make-up bag in case they lose my luggage (“honey it’s a direct flight!”), a blanket and a cushion for Lukas, a pair of high heels that I hopefully won’t have to wear, old friends’ phone numbers save on my gmail account, change for phone (both currencies), sister’s address on a piece of red paper too, charger, too few socks for Lukas, too many things to remember. Ah sure we’ll be fine.

We’re just back from our Ireland and the trip could not have gone better. Lukas slept through the take-offs and landings on both flights, woke up for a while mid-flight and didn’t seem to mind the waits on the airports as long as we kept him warm/cool enough, changed him, fed him, held him and played with him when he wanted.

Travelling in a car was no problem for him either, the gentle rocking and the sound of the motor usually put him to sleep before we go out of the town, and he didn’t mind going for a few hours without a feed until we got to our destination. He charmed everyone he met along the way with his smiles, and slept in his travel cot like a little angel.

I feel so much more confident about taking him to Finland on my own next month. We’re back to planning our life of travels now that we know he’s one of us and loves being on the road.

Before I can start exploring the world beyond the borders of the country he was born in, we’ll need to get him his own passport. At first we were laughing about it: How do you take a passport picture of a baby? Don’t they all look the same? But so it is, babies get their own 3-year passports.

Applying an Irish passport for Lukas turned out to be a bit more complicated than we had hoped for. We had to find a registered professional (bank manager, accountant, priest, teacher or a doctor) to witness our signatures and confirm all the information is correct. It had to be someone who knows us personally, but none of our acquaintances are in any of those respectable professions. We had to start going to the church, which was a surprisingly pleasant experience, and after a few weeks we got the priest to sign the forms for us.

You also have to specify your address in the application, and at the time we were filling it we were in the process of moving house, but didn’t have the full new address yet. We had to fill in the old address, and we weren’t sure where they are going to send the final passport. We delayed posting the application and the forgot all about it, so that our upcoming trip to Finland was finally too close – we couldn’t risk sending it to the passport office in case the acceptance process took more than 8 weeks.

A post office in Glasgow has a special service for Irish passport applications, if you go there and personally submit the application through them, you will get it back in 10 working days. I had nothing special to do today and Lukas was in a great mood, so we jumped in the bus to Glasgow and now it’s done! Soon he will have his own passport. I wanted to make the trip anyway, just to see how he responds to travelling. We’re going to Ireland at the end of the week (he doesn’t need a passport for that), and I’m taking him to Finland next month on my own and I want to be well prepared for that.

The baby seemed to love the trip and everything went so well, that I’m really looking forward to starting this goal soon! Also, one of my best friends got a new job in Reykjavik and she’ll be moving there in a month’s time – which of course means that we’ll be over visiting her later this year, as a family! I couldn’t be happier about this goal, travelling means so much to us.