This whole vacation felt like an experiment. We hadn’t been on any particularly adventurous trips with Ingrid – only visiting friends and relatives, and that’s quite different from a week of hiking. We weren’t exactly nervous, but quite unsure about how it would work.

It worked out perfectly all right. Ingrid was OK with sleeping in a strange house and a strange bed. She was OK with being carried on someone’s back most of the day, and spending anything from 1 to 3 hours in a car every day. She was OK with eating strange food at somewhat unpredictable times. She was even OK with two 4-hour flights.

I suspect that she was quite bored much of the time, because she slept more than usual. Or it may just have been due to all the new impressions. But she accepted the boredom quite well.

The only slight complication was that she wouldn’t drink enough water (and did not produce enough wet nappies). Of course breast milk was as popular as ever, but I don’t think the amount she gets nowadays is anywhere near enough to keep her hydrated. We resorted to giving her diluted peach juice instead of water, and that went down very well.

Speaking of nappies, that tends to be our main logistical concern when travelling. Cloth nappies are OK if we’re going somewhere for a day or two, but for a longer trip it has to be disposables because we usually don’t have anywhere to wash and dry the nappies. If we buy them at home then they take up a lot of space in our luggage, especially because it’s hard to know exactly how many we’ll need. If we buy at the destination then we usually get lots left over (they’re usually sold in packs of 60 or more) and then either have to give them away to someone, or take them home with us, which raises the issue of luggage space again. I wish nappies were sold loose, by the pound.

All in all a great success. It was certainly helpful that we were lucky with the weather, and travelled with a very helpful company. And I think we hit the sweet spot in her age: old enough to not be too “fragile” and sensitive to changes, young enough to accept days of boredom. We’ll see how the next vacation goes.