Little Footsteps in the Big World

How long can one enjoy a holiday before wanting to be back to normal life? Some people enjoy traveling for months, or even for years. I never see myself being on of them. There's always a point of a holiday when I'm basically ready to head home. As I'm typing this, we - the kids and I - have been away from home for forty three days. In normal circumstances, when we'd be away for a vacation somewhere new, it probably would've been too long. But since we're in Indonesia, my home country, staying at my parents' place, it doesn't actually feel like we're away from home. We actually ARE home. However, our main problem is the separation between us - the kids and I - with my husband. He stayed with us for the first two weeks before heading back to Croatia for work. Although to day the toddler still says she'd prefer staying here in Indonesia to going back to Croatia, I know it's now enough for her. Not the trip itself, but being away from her da...

A few days ago I read an article on the Huffington Post of a father from China who decided to travel solo with his two-year-old to Taiwan for a week, leaving the mom home. Not only they had tons of fun (he claimed that it was one of the best trips in his life), but also they had their relationship redefined, in a very good way. He learned a lot of new things he never knew about the child, but also about himself as a dad. He shared his knowledge and experience by showing her the world himself. The bonus, they gave the mom a well deserved "break" from them for a week. My husband and our toddler on a wooden boat, sailing back from Sempu Island in Malang, East Java I told my husband the story and he seemed challenged. He said he would do it, but he's not too sure if he can do it just yet. Don't get me wrong, my husband is a super dad. He changes the kids' diapers more than I do (we cloth diaper, mind you), he babywears both kids, he goes to the movies with our ...

Happy new year! It's officially my first post in 2017, but also officially the beginning of our trips with two children. We're parents of two now! My newborn joined us in the morning of January 2nd this year, made us a family of four now. Well, babygirl is still my babygirl, but I feel like I have to find another nickname for her in this blog, since our newborn is also a girl. Having said that, from now on babygirl will be referred as the toddler :) Another pair of feet to leave little footsteps in the big world A little bit more about our newborn. She's progressing very well, healthy and big (born 3,720g -that is 8 pounds 3 ounces) and seems to be a good profile of a traveling baby. Her first trip will be in the end of March when all four of us will be going to Indonesia. My husband, our toddler and I have gotten our tickets so now we just need to add our newborn to become a lapchild into my ticket. Well, for that we'd need her to own a passport. And for that, ...

Babygirl has been going to the daycare since I came back to work from maternity leave, and that was when she was exactly a year old in April 2015. A year and a half going to a private daycare, in September this year she finally got into a public daycare and started her days in the new place. Although the adaptation period was planned to last around a week to get each child used to the new environment, babygirl needed three days to settle down in her new place. I took a week off from work just in case, but she already spent the whole day being there on her fourth day. On Monday the following week, I spent my normal hours at work and everything has been fine since. Since my husband is currently working in Slovenia (about that here ), our normal day looks like this: waking up around seven, have quick breakfast and leave around half to eight, I'd drop her in the daycare (where she'd have another breakfast) and go to work, and pick her up around four in the afternoon. She sleeps...

I did move abroad. Six years ago. For good. But I didn't have a job then. I didn't have a child. Would we move abroad, now that we're a family, with jobs and a mortgage? Honestly, we probably would. We don't have any good reason yet to move for good -like that dream job offer, for example, in some place warm by the sea. But there are some shorter terms options, like secondment my husband might someday get, or longer-term research I might have to do for my study in some other country. Sounds exciting, right? You get to live for some period in a new environment you're not familiar with, take your child to new parks -maybe even find a new daycare, explore the new city in a new country, visit everything, eat everything along the way? Or not? Would it be too scary? New language, cultural and climate shock for a child? This week, though, we began an adventure in some sort of a new home for the next three months. My husband got some kind of fellowship -more similar t...

Six years. One child. Seven countries. 120.000 km. This is a story about our little red Chevrolet Spark. Which we sold today. This morning we signed a contract with the buyers and we handed the beloved car to them. And I'm feeling very, very emotional about it. Not many people feel so emotional about a car. It's just a car. But I love cars. I watched Top Gear more than I ever watched Friends in my life. Or Sex and the City. Or anything like that. My mother used to work in a car industry and my father is a car maniac. It's genetics. We got our Spark six years ago, brand new. We didn't have much money so we got a small budget car for our daily need. The car was mostly rested during the week -except for regular house errands- because we take trains to work. But we'd go to road trips and weekend getaways whenever we could. It's been to beautiful places. It witnessed the growth of our family, and now as we're growing even more, we needed  a bigger, stronger c...

I'm far from spontaneous. I'm obsessed with organization. I honestly admire people who can decide in a second where they're going the next day, sit down and buy a ticket, pack and fly the same moment they decided what to do. I'm far from that. It's not only because I'm now a mother, I never was spontaneous even as a young single traveler. I need lots and lots of planning, for a sense of security, but also for financial reasons. Now that we travel as a family with a toddler (and with another baby on the way), planning ahead help us with providing babygirl an enjoyable stay she enjoys as much as we adults do. I still wish that one day for once we could be one of those families who travel super spontaneously, but for now, this is the way of traveling that works for us. Organization is the key of a success vacation for us I have limited days of vacation. It's 26 working days a year. That's basically five weeks of vacation, which I can take whenever...

I've always been the traveling pregnant woman. And I'm a fan of babymoon. I've got several travel stories during my first pregnancy and they were all positive. With my pregnancy with baby girl, we did two big road trips at six-week pregnant. I flew to Warsaw at eleven-week pregnant. And I enjoyed every trip. On the other hand I know some ladies who think that traveling during pregnancy is a no no. Whether they don't feel comfortable (all the toilet trips, the morning sickness and the heartburn) or they're just simply tired. With me, traveling (except prenatal yoga, routine swims and regular office works, of course) kept me happy and active. And most probably, it got baby girl used to traveling from her earliest days.  Before baby girl arrived, at eight-month pregnant we decided to do a so-called babymoon trip, for a prolonged weekend in the winter of early 2014, to Bled and Bohinj in Slovenia. It's not far from Zagreb, it's an amazing place, and we got t...

Every parent has a hard time realizing how fast their children grow up. Moms want their babies to stay little forever, and dads want their children to never leave for college. Unfortunately, they do grow up. And they do it quickly. How did this happen to me? My baby girl still sleeps in the same crib. She still eats while sitting on her high chair. I still carry her on a baby carrier. She's still in diapers! What changed? The price of her plane ticket changed. Now we need to buy her a plane ticket for in full price. Sigh. My baby girl turned two last month, in mid April. Until then, we only needed to pay 10% of the full plane ticket price that I'd pay for myself, and she can travel on my lap. Now that she's two, the aviation companies decide that she needs her own seat. I mean, to be real, she probably won't even sit by herself. But it is what it is. I honestly didn't know about this until quite recently. I thought that children pay half price at least until the...

It's one of the phrases we usually hear when we're sharing our travel plans with someone (of course, who doesn't know us that much). Other that that, there is "why not leave her (with grandma) and enjoy the trip (just with your husband)", or "poor baby, it's such a hassle, she will suffer the whole trip!" Now let me get this straight, my baby girl doesn't suffer during any kind of trips. And we actually do enjoy that she is with us, as much as she enjoys the trip itself. Do we know that she will not remember? Yes, probably she won't. Do we care? No, we really don't. It's not whether she will remember that she'd visited the Acropolis that is important to us. It's the act of traveling itself that matters. That she experiences the whole process from the earliest days possible. Because traveling, like other types of experiences, helps shaping a child's personality. Baby girl playing with a the son of a family friend we v...

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...