Mongolia, Part 1: Grant’s 1st Visit to Mongolia

We made it to Mongolia and back!! (…frankly, 2 months ago)

And I’ll be honest, I was a little nervous of traveling with a lap child by myself on our first international travel. But it was totally unnecessary, Grant is a born traveler!

He made it easy to travel with him, because all he did was sleep. And no, I didn’t drug him. He took it from his mama and sleeps well on a plane.

When I was preparing for the trip, my mantra was “hope for the best, but prepare for the worst”. Thus I even packed a little bit of Benadryl per his pediatrician’s advice. He said that in case Grant has a hard time falling asleep, it’s better help him to rest than have him get overtired. But luckily we didn’t need it.

But what I was most thankful for was this amazing SkyBaby travel mattress. I literally bought it off of amazon 4 days before our trip, and boy, was I glad I did. It made it so comfortable for Grant to sleep, AND easier on me. It gave me freedom to move with both of my arm and I didn’t have to worry dropping him when I needed a nap.

And when we arrived in Mongolia, it took a few days to get over jetlag. He was waking up at 4-5AM and ready to play. Again, lucky for us, within first 3 days he got back into usual routines with 2 naps a day and regular bed time! I was impressed!

Words can’t describe how relieved I was to see him happy and comfortable in my home country. He was enjoying his grandparents, aunties and cousins so much.

He thought grandma’s cooking is the best. I’ve never seen him eat so much and so well. I even felt guilty that maybe I didn’t feed him enough at home. 🙂

Below he’s exploring my home town, Erdenet. Clean, beautiful and colorful city that I love so much!

Grant also enjoyed playing on playgrounds with other kids. He was mostly interested in playing with cars, tires and anything round. 🙂

And here’s another thing he loved doing… ↓↓↓ Looking out the balcony from the 4th floor. He sat with his feet hanging down through the slit and watched cars go by.

He thinks he’s already a big boy to ride big-boy (or in this case, girl) bikes. Hilarious!!

And I think the highlight of his trip was playing with his cousins!!! Way too cute for words!

…And it was truly bittersweet to say good-bye to grandma, grandpa, aunties and cousins. But we missed daddy so very much.

Oh and can we just applaud his adventurous taste in food?? He was more interested in my ramen than his pork gyoza at the Tokyo airport.

Yeah, gotta have that beauty sleep! (See that baby mattress in action? The best purchase!!) And we lucked out on our way back with an empty seat next to us. Yay!

Seriously, it was a blast traveling with him to Mongolia. And I hope for many more trips in the future!

If you have any questions about traveling with a toddler, let me know in the comments below. I’ll do my best to advise from our experience.