I looked up from the open suitcase in front of me, then got up, walked over to the window, and leaned over the couch so I could see the street below.

In the glow of tail lights I could see the shadow of a man standing on the sidewalk in front of our building.

The buzzer rang again. This time I picked up the phone.

"Hello," I said.

"Airport shuttle."

I hesitated, glancing toward the bedroom.

"We're on our way down."

I hung up the phone and walked back through the apartment, stepping over the suitcase to get to the bedroom door.

"The shuttle's here," I said into the dark room. "I'm gonna start bringing things down."

After yanking the zipper around from one corner to the other, I drug the suitcase and our other bags to the front door and set them in the hallway. I slung the baggage over my shoulders and struggled to the elevator. ... read more >>

We recently travelled to Cairns, Australia where my mother lives, its hot and the humidity is a killer! The thought of not only having our little girl in the heat, was a little off putting but also the first hurdle was more of a worry – Travelling with a 6 month old overseas!

We obtained a passport for her last year, now have you ever had to hold a 3 month old baby still for the camera and making sure that she doesn’t have any facial expression on her face at all – this is crazy, the lady behind the counter ended up photo shopping the photo to make it look normal and also something that would be excepted by the officials.

Now one good thing about travelling with her is that we can still take a 20kg luggage allowance for her and any excess of our’s will go in her, now don’t make the same mistake of thinking that she might be allowed an alcohol allowance – she isn’t. ... read more >>

Our break came in the form of a trip to Aruba that Megan won through her work. If you're sitting at home with your little ones you can either throw stuff at the screen or you can take a little trip in your mind with me. If you chose the latter, go make yourself a pina colada. I'll wait...

The trip almost didn't happen. With my family in California and Megan's parents in Florida, we don't really have a local option to watch the kids for extended periods of time. We've done a couple of trips in the past where we scheduled several sitters in blocks of time, but that was too stressful for everyone involved. Just as we were about to give up on the idea, the heavens opened up (singing choirs of angels and all) and delivered to us my sister Tracy. ... read more >>

I used to hate them ... babies on planes. Yep – I confess. Now that I'm a dad things are different of course. I tend to feel a bit more empathetic towards the totally stressed out parents trying to calm them down. Although I haven't actually flown with my son yet I can see how it can be tough.

To start with, when is it safe to take a baby on a plane? I know parents who have taken their babies as soon as 2 weeks after giving birth (scary thought). I've heard from others that it's probably safe after 3 months? Who knows – I guess the various ages have their advantages and disadvantages. Early on obviously babies sleep a lot more ... given the monotonous sound of a plane engine, chances are that they just fall asleep. OR they freak out because something’s wrong with their ears (pressure, high-pitched frequencies that usually only dogs can hear, etc). ... read more >>

THE LONG DRIVE

My family and I recently had the occasion to drive most of the length of the North Island, returning home from visiting the relatives. It was a landmark journey - the first long haul car trip undertaken with James, whose toddlerish exuberance is still peaking.

Toddlers aren't meant to sit down for extended periods of time - it is hotwired into their developing brains to runjumpbouncecrawlswingplayshout, not sitsitsitsitsit. So the aim of the game was keeping the small person happy and by extension, us. This wasn’t just pure altruism at work either; we wanted to get to the end in one piece. Avoiding minor catastrophes in the back seat was going a long way towards avoiding a major catastrophe on the road. So we thought it out, took all those incremental lessons learnt from short trips and rolled them together into one big ball of diversionary tactics designed to get the most out of the journey for James and us. Here's what we learnt: ... read more >>

Road Trips with small children are a trying time for anyone especially a little girl, and being that we travelled in the middle of the day didn’t help either. I took a trip with Pyper which should take the average person around 7 hours at the most took us 9.5 hours, now taking her in the car was a tricky thing being that she would be in her capsule for all but around 2.5 hours of the travel. It felt like the longest 2 days of my life to be honest! Things just took a lot longer than normal. ... read more >>

PREAMBLE