City travel/Uber and toddlers

[keweenawlove]

Talk to me about how you take ubers with a 2 year old. DD has used an inflatable booster but I think DS (2) is too young for it. Is there a similar portable option we can carry around when we're out for the day?

We just spent 3 weeks in Bogota so I thought we had getting around a city with both kids down but car seats were non existent there so I haven't thought this park of city travel with kids through. I know the car seat option of Uber exists but I've checked Chicago several times and they've never been available.

[joy]

How close to three is the two year old? There is a RideSafer vest that is great for travel but not recommended below age three.

We live in the city and walked/subway/bus until three. It was a rough.

[erbear]

I would not Uber with a kid not in a car seat, and a two year old is too young for any sort of booster. When our kids were young, it was all walking, subways, buses.

[keweenawlove]

Dec 31, 2022 10:17:31 GMT -5 joy said:

How close to three is the two year old? There is a RideSafer vest that is great for travel but not recommended below age three.

We live in the city and walked/subway/bus until three. It was a rough.

He just turned 2 in November so we've got some time but that will be great next fall.

We've spent the most time in Chicago and do a decent job with trains. A lot of the major tourist things are just obnoxiously difficult via public transportation. DD might just have to suck it up and walk. She can but if her brother's in the stroller, she wants to be and our double stroller wouldn't be great in the city.

[joy]

Dec 31, 2022 12:31:06 GMT -5 keweenawlove said:

Dec 31, 2022 10:17:31 GMT -5 joy said:

How close to three is the two year old? There is a RideSafer vest that is great for travel but not recommended below age three.

We live in the city and walked/subway/bus until three. It was a rough.

He just turned 2 in November so we've got some time but that will be great next fall.

We've spent the most time in Chicago and do a decent job with trains. A lot of the major tourist things are just obnoxiously difficult via public transportation. DD might just have to suck it up and walk. She can but if her brother's in the stroller, she wants to be and our double stroller wouldn't be great in the city.

Look into the RideSafer vest. You can decide if your kid will be big enough by the trip. It’s a huge game changer. It’s as safe as a five pt harnessed car seat but just a soft vest to carry!

[Jalapeñomel]

Buy a toddler carrier and put her on your back.

[Jalapeñomel]

Dec 31, 2022 14:35:16 GMT -5 joy said:

Dec 31, 2022 12:31:06 GMT -5 keweenawlove said:

He just turned 2 in November so we've got some time but that will be great next fall.

We've spent the most time in Chicago and do a decent job with trains. A lot of the major tourist things are just obnoxiously difficult via public transportation. DD might just have to suck it up and walk. She can but if her brother's in the stroller, she wants to be and our double stroller wouldn't be great in the city.

Look into the RideSafer vest. You can decide if your kid will be big enough by the trip. It’s a huge game changer. It’s as safe as a five pt harnessed car seat but just a soft vest to carry!

According to this site, the ride safe vest is for 3+, so it wouldn’t be safe for her 2 year old:

csftl.org/ride-safer-travel-vest-review/

Edit: I didn’t realize she’d be 3 by the time you travel.

[sent]

How old is your DD? From age 4 - 6, my DD rode on the scooter attachment of our stroller.

However, for the most part we didn't travel very much with them to places where you need to rely on hauling a car seat or hoping someone else (cab, car rental) has one to borrow. When it was just 1 kid, we had a lightweight Cosco Scenera we would fly with. With 2 kids, COVID got in the way and halted travel right after DS had outgrown the infant carrier. Last year, we finally did 2 long road trips in our car (14+ hours) to avoid the whole car seat situation for DS at age 4 and for the comfort of knowing we had our car on hand. We are looking at doing our first long flying trip this year and DS will be 5 at that point.

[keweenawlove]

Jan 1, 2023 8:55:58 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Dec 31, 2022 14:35:16 GMT -5 joy said:

Look into the RideSafer vest. You can decide if your kid will be big enough by the trip. It’s a huge game changer. It’s as safe as a five pt harnessed car seat but just a soft vest to carry!

According to this site, the ride safe vest is for 3+, so it wouldn’t be safe for her 2 year old:

csftl.org/ride-safer-travel-vest-review/

Edit: I didn’t realize she’d be 3 by the time you travel.

It looks like they just released an extra small model approved down to age 2. I'll have to check with the car seat fot people at work to see what they think. DS won't be 3 until November and we're going to Las Vegas for spring break and likely one or two Chicago trips before then. Most is public transportation/walkable but maybe it's good enough to get from the airport to hotel in Vegas.

[joy]

Jan 1, 2023 8:55:58 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Dec 31, 2022 14:35:16 GMT -5 joy said:

Look into the RideSafer vest. You can decide if your kid will be big enough by the trip. It’s a huge game changer. It’s as safe as a five pt harnessed car seat but just a soft vest to carry!

According to this site, the ride safe vest is for 3+, so it wouldn’t be safe for her 2 year old:

csftl.org/ride-safer-travel-vest-review/

Edit: I didn’t realize she’d be 3 by the time you travel.

To be fair, even three is a bit dicey for it to work well. There’s just so few options for ease of city travel at this age. It’s frustrating.

I remember picking my daughter up from daycare in a tropical storm. I had no car and stood waiting for the bus with her in a carrier. Tree branches were flying everywhere and it was pouring. I couldn’t just jump in an Uber to get out of there because there were no options for a safe carseat for her that was easy for me to get from work to daycare then home. Ugh. This age is the woooorst for city living.

[keweenawlove]

Jan 1, 2023 18:00:52 GMT -5 joy said:

To be fair, even three is a bit dicey for it to work well. There’s just so few options for ease of city travel at this age. It’s frustrating.

I remember picking my daughter up from daycare in a tropical storm. I had no car and stood waiting for the bus with her in a carrier. Tree branches were flying everywhere and it was pouring. I couldn’t just jump in an Uber to get out of there because there were no options for a safe carseat for her that was easy for me to get from work to daycare then home. Ugh. This age is the woooorst for city living.

That sounds awful. We got a little taste of city with the time we spent in Bogota where doing strollers on rough sidewalks drove me crazy. But car seats (and sometimes seat belts) aren't around there so our agency had us going all over town in cabs just having to hold both kids for a different kind of stress. There's no easy way!