Little Footsteps in the Big World

My husband and I had loved road-trips before we were blessed with baby girl, and her arrival wasn't going to stop us from driving. But then we had problems. Although she had been flying since birth and loving it, she wasn't loving her car-seat and wouldn't stand driving in the car for more than three minutes in her early days. By the time she was around eight or nine-month old, she started to not to mind driving. She wasn't thrilled, but she didn't protest. Now by the time she's two, she loves it. She loves cars. Here are some tips we could share: Break the trip into smaller parts If I remember well, our first road-trip outside of Croatia was a prolonged weekend trip to Gorizia in Italy. Baby girl just turned one, I remember I had just returned to work then. Gorizia is only around 300 km away from Zagreb, but we knew baby girl wasn't ready to drive four hours non-stop. We broke the trip to two sections, we started from Zagreb in the morning after br...

If you fly frequently, whether for business or pleasure, you're probably familiar with miles collecting program. There are the ones that are provided by alliances that consist of many airline companies such as Miles and More program from Star alliances and Frequent flyer program from Skyteam; or individual programs by companies such as Miles and Smiles from Turkish airlines or Skywards from Emirates. My husband and I prefer Miles and More simply because it consists of the air companies we frequently fly. Mostly we fly Turkish airlines for Indonesia, or Croatia airlines for domestic flights, or Lufthansa for European flights; and all of them are member of Star alliances, so we collect miles from all their flights. So it works this way: whenever you fly with any of their member companies, you're awarded with certain amount of miles depending on your booking class. If you collect enough miles, you can use them to buy another flight, to book hotels, to rent cars, or to buy things...

Baby girl started to go to the daycare right after her first birthday because my maternity leave ended on the day she turned one. I had to go back to work, and we didn't really have other choice except daycare. It took us two full weeks to get used to life in the daycare. She was still breastfeeding (she still is), and she spent her whole first year of life only with me, more or less. It's not that my husband didn't get involved with the upbringing, but it was me whom she spent every single day with, when he was at work. She was extremely attached to me, still nursing many times a day and never was watched by anyone. After two weeks of a delicate adaptation plan (meaning she came and stayed for half an hour for the first day and then half an hour was added every day for the next days) she and I managed not to cry during our morning separation on the first day of week three. She attends daycare from 8am to around 4pm since, willingly and happily. In July last year, we went...

Being an Indonesian born, I never had the habit of buying travel health insurance. In the country where I was born, probably until recently, health insurance is an unknown concept for most of the people. The absence of an obligatory health insurance get the people used of the idea of sickness as a risk. If you get sick, you're going to need to pay for your treatment and medication. Period. Living in Croatia for over five years changed my point of view of health. Sickness is not a risk. Healthcare is a right of everyone. Take some percentage of my gross salary for health insurance, probably I'd pay some little extra money for an additional health services, I get sick, I go to public hospital, I get cured and I go home, without spending more money. So do we buy travel health insurance when we go abroad? Before we had our little one, honestly, we didn't. We would go out of the country with positive thoughts and that's it. Now we'd think twice because a baby is in...