To download the book for free, click here>> Travel India with a Toddler

Hello, lovely readers and my dear friends, I know this is a really late post. Although I’d posted about my ebook (Travel India with a Toddler) launch on social media in May, I couldn’t write a blog post about it. This journey from being a Stay at home mom (SAHM) to a Blogger and then an Author had been truly incredible for me and all the credit goes to my loyal readers and friends who made it possible. I am all because of you guys. Thank you for your love and constant support.

Today I am here to share my journey from being a mother to blogger to an author with you all. I hope it inspires more mothers to do something for themselves and use motherhood as their strength to achieve their goals.

In March this year, I wrote a post ‘My Journey from Mommy to Mommy Blogger’, where I shared how I got the motivation to start my blog. I have also mentioned about the parenting & blogging communities which are the major contributors in my journey. Do check out the post to read the first part of this journey.

From SAHM to Blogger to an Author in just 2 years.

It feels AWESOME!

Now, I’m pretty sure you’d like to know about the second part of this journey from a Blogger to an Author & how did that magic happen? So here it goes…

If you miss traveling after becoming a parent or if you hesitate to travel with your kids and if you want to know how to make traveling a fun family affair, then this book is for you. And for travelers, this book will be a sheer delight, I’m sure you will love reading our travel stories from the Andaman Islands, Kashmir, and Meghalaya.

Oh, and there are a lot of travel pics too.

Here’s presenting ‘Travel India with a Toddler’ my debut E-book for you all.

Everything you need to know about planning a trip to Andaman, Kashmir & Meghalaya with kids.

There’s a thrill…there’s fear…there’s adrenaline rush and there’s lots of fun. Come along with us & travel India with a toddler.

To download the book for free, click here>> Travel India with a Toddler

And now some behind the scenes. Before the launch of my ebook, only a handful of people knew that it was going to happen. And once it got launched, many people told me they never thought I was planning to write a book.

And I’ve been telling everyone that it was not planned, it just happened.

The story behind ‘Travel India with a Toddler’

This book happened because of Blogchatter and I want to give all the credit to them. They presented an amazing opportunity in the form of ‘A to Z challenge’ and ‘Ebook Carnival’ for their community of bloggers and like many others, I just took it. There was nothing to lose!

It all started with the New Year, we entered 2019 and I started writing down my plans for the year. Since we’ve traveled a lot in 2018, one of the things I wanted to focus on was putting our travel stories on my blog. A to Z challenge made it possible, it’s a blogging challenge where all the participants are required to write one blog post daily for 26 days except on Sundays.

PIN IT!

I knew if there is something I can write about without much effort, it has to be Travel & I chose Traveling with kids as my theme. Still, it was not easy to write 1 complete post with images every single day for a month especially if you are a mother.

Somehow I succeeded in completing the challenge and the next task was to decide whether to go ahead with the #BlogchatterEbook Carnival and convert those 26 posts into an E-book.

It took almost a week or more to make up my mind and give a thumbs up for another challenge. And I got only a week after that to bring a book out of those blog posts. I wanted to learn something new and the opportunity was sitting right in front of me.

So, becoming an author was never a dream neither it was a well-thought plan, it just happened.

The next thing I remember is this grand launch of my E-book by Blogchatter which made it all the more special.

 

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A post shared by Neha Sharma (@growing_with_nemit) on May 14, 2019 at 5:30am PDT

I am not an ambitious kind but I always like to try out new things. And I put my 100% into learning new stuff. My journey for the last 2 years is proof of that.

Another fun part after the book launch was getting all the lovely wishes from friends and family who never thought I had it in me. Next was getting some really wonderful reviews of my book by fellow bloggers/authors. You may read all the reviews here-

1- Book Review by Suhasini

This book is not a typical travel book which lists the places to cover and things to do in different places. It really covers how to plan your trip with both kids and elders in the family.  Having said that, don’t think that this book doesn’t have the places to see, it covers the places to visit in each trip and also the precautions to be taken while going to that place…

2- Book Review by Mayuri

Neha and Sumit Sharma travel the world with their toddler, Nemit. The fact that 3 year old Nemit started travelling when he was only 2 months old, and has travelled more than any adult I know has, for a 3 year old, makes you realise that his parents are doing something right. What is the secret Nemit’s parents hold? Have they cracked the formula of Travelling with a Toddler?…

3- Book Review by Charu

Neha’s Travel India With A Toddler is a book with a purpose. It is aimed to build her readers’ (mainly parents) confidence to travel more with their kids. A lot of parents (including me) find traveling with young kids difficult. But Neha’s book aims to redefine this age-old assumption and rather proves that if planned well with a positive mindset, vacation with young kids can be fun and most memorable…

4- Book Review by Pragnya

The book is for all parents who stopped traveling because of a baby. Or those who want to but are clueless about how. Book is downright practical and straight from experiences. The pictures are real, taken from the trips. Give a better idea of it’s actually possible to travel. Immense planning of the itinerary can be seen in the book…

To download the book for free, click here>> Travel India with a Toddler

I hope you enjoy reading the book and find our travel stories and tips helpful. Do share your feedback/review after reading. Also, please SUBSCRIBE to our blog to get direct updates in your mailbox.

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The post ‘Travel India with a Toddler’ (Debut E-book) – Mother to Blogger to Author appeared first on Growing With Nemit.

Travelling to new destinations is what our family is most fond of; we try to make sure that we take at least 2 vacations in a year, more the merrier. After Nemit’s birth we have started linking vacations to special occasions, so we prefer travelling around our birthdays and anniversary dates. We have already taken this year’s 2 trips, Malaysia on Nemit’s 1^st birthday and the Maldives on our anniversary.

I was quite sure that we are already done with this year but surprisingly hubby started giving hints of planning another trip for my Birthday and who can say ‘NO’ to a vacation offer? Not me, for sure.

So, as many of you know that recently we made a trip to Kerala (India) with our 19-month-old boy to celebrate my Birthday, it was Nemit’s 6^th trip and just like the other 5, it came out to be super fun as he had an amazing time in God’s own country and highlight of the trip was he had the company of his Nani and Dadi (Nemit’s grandmothers) to pamper him with all the care and love in the world.

I always take a lot of time planning our vacations just to make sure we have a smooth experience throughout. Since this vacation was 9 days long and included lots of travelling by road, ranging from hills to beaches, I had to make sure that Nemit stays happy and engaged in the car as that’s the most difficult part of traveling with a toddler, they simply refuse to stay seated for long.

You may also read – Plan a trip to Meghalaya with your toddler!

From checking comfortable and child-friendly hotels and resorts to arranging toys and activities to keep him happily busy I did all just to make sure we do not have a cranky child ruining the trip for everyone. Nobody likes to enjoy or relax when there is a crying baby hanging around. Now that we were 4 adults, I can say it was a plus for us as whenever he got bored with one he would hop on to the other one.

Most of the times, it was Nani/Dadi he would go to, and Papa if he wants to take a nap or just to have some dude talk and Me if he wanted to do some Dudu business or simply when getting bored!

I want to share what actually worked for us during the whole trip. I prepared a bag of toys for Nemit and kept it with us wherever we went to, the beach, the restaurant, poolside, in the car, during the flight, almost everywhere. Made it as a separate bag to be taken along as cabin baggage.

This minion backpack was gifted to us by a dear friend on Nemit’s birthday; it has 2 compartments, front one with more space and back with little lesser space. So, I used the back one to keep books and at the front, I placed another small bag containing toys and few more things separately. You can check the images below to get an idea.

Books

1. Picture Books –

I bought these super light, small size bright lively books from a local market under 50 Rs each. The eye-catching illustrations help in the fun way of learning. I kept-

• 1 animals book (as he like animals)
• 1 Vegetable’s book (as that was new to him)

You can keep any number of books you like as per your child’s liking. These 2 books were enough for us for 9 days and were the first ones to come out of the bag whenever there were no other activities to do, Nemit just loved these books; he now recognizes all the animals and vegetables from the book.

2. Colouring Book with 2 crayons –

This book is quite light too with just 8 pages of simple shapes & objects and came under 50 Rs. I kept 2 different colored crayons in case one gets broken or lost. Whenever Nemit used to get irritated, we would hand him this coloring book and he would happily scribble away his frustration.

3. Learning Colours Book –

Now this one is my favorite, I like the illustrations and bright colors. Each page has a color and 3 different objects of the same color so it was fun pointing at objects, naming them and linking them to the specific color. This one I bought for 75 Rs.

Doodle with Pen & Stamps

Apart from these books I also kept a Doodle, everyone knows one can never go wrong with a doodle and kids can never get bored of using a pen. During the trip, Nemit learned to draw a circle on his doodle and calls it a ball, Amazing, right! I got this one for 100 Rs, again from the same local market, there are many varieties available but for travelling, I liked this one, quite sturdy and served our purpose too.

The last and the best thing which I kept in the back pocket was an-

E-Book

This worked best for us at times when everything else failed. It’s a sound book with interesting activities & games and learning content. Use of screen media was on my mind while planning the trip as we can avoid mobiles, tablets, and television at home but almost impossible to avoid during the long travels and that too when you have elders accompanying you. Just because we had this book to our rescue our use of digital devices was limited for Nemit.

This is a 10-page interactive entertainment and learning book, the right side of the book has everything from alphabets, numbers, fruits, animals, vehicles, and characters to literature, short stories and classic rhymes and is operated with underlying touch buttons. Left side is full of games and activities like matching and counting games, there is a writing pad too. I bought it for 500 Rs and trust me it is my best buy among sound toys till now.

Now coming to the front pocket, more space meant we could take his toys along too, but as we all know kids get easily bored with old toys so I had to find some small and engaging new toys for Nemit.

These 3 toys were a savior–

• Sliceable Vegetables
• Building block pipes
• Building blocks

I didn’t keep the whole box of these toys, just a few of each in a separate bag and would give one at a time to Nemit, these kept him busy during the times when he was full of energy but has limited space to move around, so he would put all his excess energy and imagination into working with these, building and breaking. All these were new to him as I hadn’t introduced any of these blocks and vegetables earlier so that was also a plus point to keep him interested and engaged for long.

Apart from these toys, I kept a small bowl and 2 spoons in the same compartment of the bag and gave them to him with some dry snacks to eat on his own, that also kept him engaged for a stretch. Mostly helped at the restaurant when he was clearly not hungry or not interested in eating the regular stuff and we were rushing to finish ours.

These toys and books are what I found apt for my boy as per his age, interests, and liking. One thing I can assure all you parents is if the vacations are planned to keep in mind the interests of our kids then we can never go wrong if our kids are happy we can enjoy even at the wackiest of places.

You may also read – Explore the caves at Nainital with your toddler!

Few tips to make travelling, a fun family affair

1- Always try to be a part of your child’s play. If you hand over a book to the child, don’t expect him to go through the pages and enjoy on his own. He would appreciate your engagement.

2- Always try to relate items in the book to items in real. That will help him in understanding things better and could relate to real things.

3- For travelling purpose try to carry ‘not too costly’ new toys. As these will generate more interest and low cost will fall light on your travelling budget.

4- Never leave your toddler unattended with toys. They may take the small parts in their mouth like crayons or stamps of doodle. Even the small plastic parts that can result in choking hazard.

5- If possible, book flights and plan road journey around your little one’s nap time.

6- Avoid using devices to keep your child busy. That will keep him engaged but will have only negative effects. Also, you will lose on your bonding time, rather save them for the worst scenarios.

7- If possible ditch your devices for a certain period during the trip. Messages and Facebook updates can wait.

8- Pack a lot of snacks for kids. They love to munch anywhere anytime especially while travelling. Do keep a check on the salt and sugar content as too much of anything is bad.

9- During long road journeys, take little breaks after every 1-2 hrs. Let your kid move around a bit, change in environment helps a lot.

10- Lastly, what I always say, capture all the beautiful moments in your camera to preserve them forever.

Here’s a post where I have shared travel essentials while travelling with a toddler >>Check it out<<

Thanks for going through this post; I hope you found it good and helpful. Please do comment below, I would love to read your experience of travelling with a toddler too.

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The post Travelling with Toddler – Must have Toys and Activity Books appeared first on Growing With Nemit.