Traveling lessons learned with our one-year old

A month ago, we went on a 12-day vacation to New York where we spent some time visiting S's brother and ate our way through many of the locations mentioned in the Serious Eats Guide to NYC.

The timing happened to work out such that I had a little bit of a window in a busy season at work (we just finished a milestone), and I still had quite a bit of California paid family leave (which expires after the baby turns 1 year old) remaining.  Plus, after a year of stay-at-home mom-hood, S was raring to get out of the house for a while, so we got some last minute tickets, found a good hotel deal, and packed everything up.

On the good side, we got to spend some quality time with S's brother, ate a lot of good food, got to catch up with old friend Pastor Drew, and got to introduce little D to the City That Never Sleeps.  Our pictorial highlights can be found here and I'll mention a few culinary highlights for the food enthusiasts at the bottom of this post.  But on the flip side, we also went through several painful lessons of traveling with our little boy that I'll document here so that if any other travel newbie parents have a similarly-temperament-ed child to ours, they can learn from our pain.  Of course, every baby is different, so your mileage may vary.

1. Try to do your traveling after the baby is in more solid health (probably after 3 months in most cases) but before baby gets mobile (crawling, walking, etc.). Ever since D gained the ability to move himself around, he cannot be in one place for an extended period of time - he'll go crazy very loudly.  This is why we didn't have problems on our flight to Hawaii to visit S' parents at 5 months, but also why both flying to NYC and back were exercises in frustration trying to keep a squirming baby in our laps while the "Fasten seat belt" sign was on.
2. Avoid redeyes. We've always taken the redeye from SJC to JFK since it's the only direct flight on JetBlue, with all other flights earlier in the day having at least one layover. We figured, D sleeps wonderfully at night, so he shouldn't have any problems, right? Big time wrong.  We got maybe a total of 30 mins sleep on the flight over (meaning 30 mins of sleep the whole night), and were stressed out the entire time because the entire plane is trying to sleep and D was melting down. Right off the bat we already felt like canceling our vacation and going back home.
3. Spend the money to get a hotel room unless you can stay with a friend/family member who has baby items like a crib. In Long Island, we stayed with S's generous brother who housed us for a few days, but it was difficult for D to adjust to sleeping on a camping mat in the living room next to our air mattress, so he was up in the middle of the night every night. Feeding was also difficult without a high chair, so it'd be wise to pack a booster seat or something like that (even though they take a lot of room).  In addition, one other benefit to staying at a hotel is that you don't have to worry as much about cleaning up after yourself.  So to recap, for the first 5 days of the trip, each day (usually in the dark of early morning) it was tempting to call it quits and head back home.
4. If you can afford it, look for a suite rather than a standard hotel room. Since D goes to sleep earlier in the evening, we had several nights where we would get him ready for bed, then S would put him down while I walked out to get us dinner. We could then eat dinner and hang out, converse, watch TV/movies, or whatever else without having to worry about disturbing the little one. Since D has gotten used to sleeping in his own room, we actually found that he slept better if we stayed out of the bedroom entirely and slept on the sofa bed. It made our sleep less comfortable, but he ended up sleeping 12 hours in a stretch.
   Incidentally, if anyone ever vacations to Manhattan with a baby, we highly recommend our hotel - the Affinia Shelburne.  It's not cheap (very little lodging in Manhattan is) but given how much time we spent in the room while on D's schedule, it was awesome. In addition to springing for the suite, the room had a kitchenette w/ microwave so we could reheat leftovers on eat-in nights, and the hotel also provided a crib, high chair, baby bath tub, and humidifier. Very, very baby friendly.
5. Make sure to have a nice, light umbrella stroller and baby carrier for urban settings. We were constantly switching back and forth as we walked around the city, down and up stairs into the subway, so the extra mobility was essential.  The other fun thing was that D started pushing his own stroller as a walker whenever we could find a big open area. It was amusing seeing incoming pedestrians startle as they saw what appeared to be a remote-controlled stroller moving towards them until they passed by to see D earnestly trudging away.

Finally, our five favorite bites from our "food tour" of places around the city (click on the links for photos and descriptions).

     5.  Pork belly buns from Momofuku Ssam and the pork belly sandwich from Num Pang.

     4.  Smoked salmon and pickled herring from Russ and Daughters.

     3.  NYC-style pizza from John's Pizzeria and Neapolitan-style pizza from Motorino.

     2.  Halal Mix Chicken and Gyro over Rice from the Halal Guys - we didn't have very high expectations for this food cart and it was awesome, and just $6. Even though it was enough food for two, we regretted not getting two and eating even more.

     1.  Grilled Scallop with Uni and Uni Porridge from Neta - we got out for one nice meal while S's brother stayed in the hotel with a sleeping D. This Japanese restaurant had two incredibly delicious dishes where uni acted as a flavor enhancer.