Over the first 24 months traveling with our daughter, here are trips that we took, plus her age when we went. We’re providing this list to let you see how we progressed from short road trips to short flights, and then longer flights and longer trips!

0-3 months

At 12-13 weeks old: We took a road trip New Hampshire to visit family (car - 6 hours).

We didn’t write anything about this experience because we were extremely tired due to our baby’s sleep regression and “coming out of the newborn phase.”

Let’s skip to the next and more memorable trip where we didn’t have to nap quite as much! 😉

3-6 months

When our baby was 5 months, we took a road trip to the Catskill Mountains in Upstate New York, where we stayed at a cabin-style hotel property in Livingston Manor.

This was a car trip, with each way totalling 2.5 hours in the car. Links with the details are below, in case you’re curious as to which kind of trip this was.

When our baby was 6 months, we went back for a road trip in the same direction. This time it was more adventurous: we went to a more rural community and stayed near a village called Andes. This was another car trip of 2.5 hours, each way. See the details:

6-12 months

At 7 months, we took a three-day long weekend getaway to the Litchfield Hills region of the state of Connecticut. Our plan was to spend time in Litchfield, CT, as well as the surrounding region, which is very pretty and known to be great for summer family trips. This was 2 hours one way in the car, and we spent our second day driving throughout the region. See the details:

At 8 months, hooray! We finally took our baby’s first flight to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. We felt READY! And this flight was an excellent introduction to our first time flying with a baby, at only 2 hours nonstop.

See all the details about our first “international” adventure with our baby:

Leaving the US made us remember why we choose to travel internationally with a baby and we never looked back.

12-18 months

At 14 months, we took a bigger trip: we flew to Florida, and then onward to Colombia, our daughter’s second passport stamp.

The flight to Florida was 2.5 hours, and then we flew onward to Medellin, Colombia, which was 3.5 hours. Flying back to NYC at the end of the trip was 6 straight hours from Bogota, Colombia. We survived, and our young toddler behaved amazingly!

See the details:

Traveling in Colombia and needing to see a doctor and consider grabbing medicine gave us a lot of on-the-go experience to write our guide to how international travel differs from domestic travel when you have a baby.

18-24 months

At 20 months, we took our third international trip to Mexico City. This was a nonstop flight of 5 hours nonstop one way. Mexico was our daugter’s third passport stamp in one year, and the first time we had to prepare for our child’s jet lag while away from home.

See the details below.

As cautious first-time parents, with the exception of the first trip, we worked our way up in duration of travel to test for ourselves that we could do longer and bigger trips.

In hindsight, we didn’t need to do that at all, but in the moment, it was a comfortable and logical choice for us. Lots of parents, and plenty of parents we know, dive right into taking a “big trip” pretty immediately with their baby. It is up to you.