Sharing a hotel room with toddlers?

We've been invited to a bat mitzvah to be held during the 4th of July weekend, at a resort about 2 hours from here. The ceremony is at 9:45 a.m., so if we didn't drive up the night before, we'd need to leave our house by 7:00 a.m.

The hosts have reserved some rooms at the resort, which are $100/night. At first I assumed we'd stay overnight (or maybe even stay a couple of nights and make a mini-vacation of it), but then I started thinking about how not-fun it would be to share a hotel room with two toddlers who go to bed at 8 p.m. Unfortunately getting a suite is not an option -- only single rooms.

For those of you who have put the whole family in one hotel room, what was it like? Was it so awful that you'd rather do the roundtrip in one day? Where did the kids sleep? How did you deal with bedtime, and what did you and DH do after they were asleep?

 

lol, I'm actually sitting in a hotel room right now! The first night we got here was pretty late & I had to run to the store for something dh forgot & he didn't put the kids to bed till 10pm.....so we'll just not count that night.

Tonight wasn't so bad. We got a room with 2 queens, knowing all 4 of us on one bed wouldn't be comfortable plus the kids dont' sleep well together. DH & I each took a bed with 1 kid. I brought along my computer since the hotel has free internet & I figured I'd be bored while they nap.....so tonight I put the kids to bed each on a bed, turned off the lights & played around on my computer till they fell asleep. We're here with friends, so while the kids were falling asleep dh & his friend were down in a restaraunt area, visiting & had a couple beers. He always goes to bed before I do, so he's actually asleep right now with the kids. And they're all sound enough sleepers that I think it'll be ok to turn on the tv when I go to bed.

Otherwise, I'd take a good book & some kind of light to read by. They have lights by our bed, but they're too bright. I did bring along night lights from home for the kids & their own blankets & stuffed animals.

All in all, tonight's bedtime went a lot better than I expected! Maybe the kids were just too tired. We still have cribs at home, so I wasn't sure how they'd do with being in a bed......dd only got out of bed twice & ds never did.

 

No good advice, we've always done a hotel room that has a separate bedroom (suite-style), and have had no problems so far.

 

We did it for the 1st time 2 summers ago (so around your kids age) to do the twins festival in ohio. It actually went really well. We each slept with one child, we did lie with them to get them to sleep. then we watched TV or sat at the table and we got food later (DH went for it). If it has a balcony as long as you keep the door open you could sit on it and still be able to hear them. We also did a lot of reading it worked out well.

amanda

 

Thanks for asking this! We will be doing this this summer....
Last year we went away and they were in pack n plays. We watched tv once they were asleep.

 

I sit in the hall until they fall asleep, our vacations tend to happen in groups so a bunch of us sit outside the door. Once they are asleep I can do anything I want (watch tv, play on the computer etc). One time our rooms were separated so I just watched tv and read TS until I was ready to go to sleep. It really has worked out well. The children are usually soo tired that that fall right to sleep.

 

I think it's defintely not an option, at least not for us. When we travelled we had 2 rooms sometimes if no suite hotels were available and we would stay in 1 room with our oldest and then one of us would go back and sleep with the twins (connecting doors are often an option in this case). We usually put one in the bathroom in a PNP and the other one on the opposite end. Then go to sleep and DO NOT move!

I always stay in suite hotels or get 2 rooms with connecting doors (and if not available we split) but there are 5 of us, so we often need 2 rooms anyway, since most hotels don't allow 5 in a room (and it sounds horrible anyway)!

 

We always get a suite or adjoining rooms. It's a little bit more expensive, but I think it's worth it for us all to have a good night's sleep.

 

I can't picture us all sharing a hotel room either. Maybe for one night we could manage, but not more than that. We did do it when they were 14 months for a family event. What we did then was put them down for bed at the usual time, and then we had brought the baby monitor and took it with us while we visited with family in other rooms. Then around 10:00, we snuck back into our room and went to bed.
When we were in MA for a week, we got a two bedroom suite, and it was a lifesaver. We could pretty much function like we were at home. Put them to bed, and then watch TV or whatever.

 

We just did this last weekend for the first time (funny - it was to go to a bar mitzvah too!) and it worked out so much better than I had expected.

The twins still sleep in pack and plays, so I asked for a room with one bed and enough space for the 2 cribs. They LOVED the hotel (there was an indoor pool, and also a big jungle gym outside). Mine usually don't go to bed until closer to 9:00 anyways, and they ended up staying up a little bit late, and DH and I were exhausted, so we all went to bed at around 9:30 both nights. On Saturday during nap time DH and I took turns sitting in the hall right outside the room door and read - got some funny looks, but who cares. I tried bringing the monitor down to the lobby (which was quite close to our room) but apparently the hotel room doors are steel reinforced (or something like that) and the monitor wouldn't pick up the signal - so the hall it was.

They did wake up pretty early and wanted to come in bed with us, but it was kind of fun since we had a king size bed so we all actually fit (at home they do this in our full size bed, and somehow I'm the one who always ends up getting pushed off).

I think one of the reasons this worked is because the twins have shared a room since December (they had separate rooms before that) so they were used to sleeping next to each other . . . it had always been a problem before when we visited family and tried to get them to sleep in the same room - they just wouldn't sleep!

So, it's probably worth a try. I've been very resistant to traveling with them, but it worked out well enough that now I'm looking forward to being able to get away from home now and then.

good luck!

Rachel

 

For us, I had to make sure we had two rooms I couldn't imagine one with my boys, Our first vaca last year the boys were 18 months, we put the boys to bed at 7pm in PNP's and DH and I were able to sit out on the deck with the monitor. We would go to bed around 11pm each of us took a double bed and my SD slept on the couch bed she is too big to fit with either of us....the only thing was an earlier than usual wake up call for me because when they woke I was in the same room so they would not lay back down and my day would usually start around 4:30am. Naptime was was fine they would sleep for about an hour one of us would stay in the room and the other would go to the pool with my SD.

 

At that age, I set up a sleeping area for them on one side of the room and jerry-rigged a big white sheet between them and us. After putting them to bed, Paul and I would usually go sit outside the door and read for a little while. Then we'd come back in and quietly watch TV.

Right now when we travel, Dax goes to bed at about 7:30 so I send the girls to play video games in the bathroom while I put him to sleep. Then I put him in his Pack n play and cover it with a sheet to keep out the light before we watch TV quietly or read.

 

Thanks everyone!

OK, so follow-up question: Would you even stay overnight, or just do the trip in one day?

My thinking at the moment is: If we drove up on Friday, the holiday weekend traffic would be horrible. We'd sleep badly (probably), go to the bat mitzvah on Saturday morning and the party afterwards, and then it would be naptime. Unless we were staying another night, it would make the most sense to just drive home during naptime, rather than trying to get them to nap in the hotel just so we could drive home later.

It just doesn't seem like a great trade-off: $100 (and bad sleep) just so we don't have to wake the kids up early Saturday morning, and we split the 4 hrs of driving over two days instead of one.

And if we did stay another night, we could do more fun stuff, but it's another $100, more iffy sleep, and worse traffic driving home on Sunday.

Thoughts?