When Baby Makes 4…Travel with Toddler and Baby–Deciding Which Stroller(s) to Travel With

Since our first big family trip, our trusty umbrella stroller, the UPPAbaby G-Lite, has traveled all over with us.  It’s handled gravel, dirt paths and even sand like a champ.  It’s carried an unreal number of groceries (and our daughter) back to the hotel, been thrown over our shoulder with ease as we boarded the bus (thanks to the super-helpful shoulder strap and its light weight), and been washed countless times (it’s best feature, in our opinion).  Did we mention that UPPAbaby has AMAZING customer service?  When it stopped standing up on its own after a recent flight, we emailed UPPAbaby and they got back to us right away and SENT US A NEW ONE.  Awesome.  For more on our experience with this excellent travel stroller, you can read our complete UPPAbaby G-Lite umbrella stroller review.

When baby number two came along recently, we were faced with a decision.  The G-Lite is a single stroller.  What were we going to do now that we needed seating for two?  We looked into double strollers, but even the light weight ones weighed far more than double the weight of the G-Lite (at only 6lbs, it’s hard to compete!)  Not to mention that none of the other strollers offered the FABULOUS washable seat that UPPAbaby has on the G-Lite.  The G-Lite is the only stroller out there (or it was, until UPPAbaby recently re-designed the G-Luxe) with an easily removable seat that goes in the washing machine AND still leaves you with a (very usable) mesh seat.  We love, love, LOVE that feature (and can’t count how many times we’ve used it).  So we really didn’t want to give it up.

So, after much research and debate, we decided to keep the G-Lite and simply get a second one for baby #2.  We actually think that having two strollers rather than one double stroller will be an advantage in smaller stores or on narrow sidewalks where it would be difficult to fit a wider stroller.  We’re planning on trying out some stroller connectors so that just one of us can push them both through the airport, for example (especially since eventually Wendy will travel “home” to Canada with them alone).  We’ll let you know how the stroller connectors go once we’ve tried them.

But – there’s a catch.  The UPPAbaby G-Lite is an amazingly light weight, durable, washable umbrella stroller – with NO recline.  Which is why it’s supposed to be used only with children over 6-months of age.  Well, we’ve just booked our first flight “home” to visit family in Canada.  We’re headed there in April, which will mean our son will be only 4-months-old.  So this is where we’re stuck at the moment.  Do we simply try to use it with him anyways, and hope he’ll be ok?  Do we bring our Snap ‘n Go that we used for traveling “home” with our daughter?  (We will be bringing his car seat, although we will be checking it – whether at the gate or with our luggage).  That will leave us trying to fit both the Snap ‘n Go and the G-Lite into the rental car trunk.  It should work, since we don’t usually bring that much stuff.  Or do we just bring our UPPAbaby Vista?  With the RumbleSeat it’s a FABULOUS double stroller that we use every day…but it’s not exactly small…and we’re not so sure it will fit into our rental car trunk along with all our luggage.  Of course, we could just check our son’s car seat and then carry him in our Ergo baby carrier, using the G-Lite for our daughter.  That would leave us without a stroller for him, though, which would be a pain if we decided to go shopping, for example.

Right now we’re leaning toward bringing the Snap ‘n Go for the baby and the G-Lite for our toddler.  By our next family trip, our son will be old enough for the G-Lite and we plan to switch to using two of those.  Have you been in a similar situation?  How have you handled it?