Cruising kids

Hi,
some people have asked us how Lani is doing while cruising. We are all surprised how well she is coping with the situation. What are the limitations?
She can not go outside and walk around but so far she has not complained about that. She wants to go on the trampoline to jump up and down but we told her that the net is dirty and she can not go there and she accepts it. The good side of the coin is that we have a lot of time to play, read and sing with her.
So we came up with some stupid things like "Commando". One says "Commando" and then "CLAP" for example and then everyone has to clap. Or "Commando pistol" and everyone has to hold his fingers like a pistol. This can go on endless and always, especially between eating breakfast or dinner. She is learning coordination by that and has a lot of fun.
Also we show her all the fish and she is squeeking in enjoyment because she loves fish. Some building blocks like Lego Duplo or Fisher Price basics are great to build bridges or towers and then of course throw them over. Singing and reading books together is another great thing. Or just while we are brwosing a magazine we let her also peek into it and she will recognize a car, cat, plane and so on.
We try to keep at leats 10% of the conversations in english and also read english books with her. She learned to count to ten in german and english while on this trip.
We are counting everything now :-)

But you also have to make sure that they have a time where they have to play alone which we do. There are many items which you can turn into a toy, so yesterday i built a shark out of a paper roll and she loved it.

Drawing is of course another thing. Lani is telling us what to draw and we have to do it. Then she is taking the pen and "draws" also. What we found amazing is her capability of standing on the couch while big waves are rolling under the boat. Her balance is incredible. It is so hot now that she is wearing a diaper only when inside and nothing when outside of the boat playing with water.

With food we brought some ready made dishes but try to give her as much as possible from our food. She already has tried Chillie con carne for example but of course we did it less spicy this time.

A catamaran is definitive an advantage for cruising kids because of the space and lack of heeling. She can sit on the salon floor and play with building blocks for example. On a rolling or heeling monohull this would be more difficult.

Whenever we put the fishing rod out she gets excited and says "Fisch fangen" means "catch a fish".

So she is participating in our daily activities. If we all need a break we turn on a small videoplayer with "Finding Nemo". I would not encourage this at home but on the boat you need to have all crew on deck for certain things like getting down the Spinnaker. As soon as we bring out the player she says "inverter on" because we need 220 Volt for that. Of course she has no clue what it means but she realized that we always say "Turn the inverter on" when using the video player and she justs mimics that.

What are useful tools or things to have on the boat? A snap-on chair which you can just clip to a table inside or outside. If this chair has a seatbelt you can also secure the little one when needed.
Also keep some toys and books as "spare" so that every week you can bring out new stuff. What we found amazing was the help and friendliness of other boaties with Lani. From the crew of "Waterman", a durch catamaran we got a small cow and from Liz and John from Jalan-Jalan a puzzle and drawing book before we left. Most boaties have much older kids and so they are experienced parents and they love to be exposed to little ones at least for a while :-)
Most people in the Arc who know us do it because of Lani. Even on parties she is running around between people and then just dozing of in her pram.

Would we do it again to take a 17month old baby on the boat for 3 weeks? Our answer is YES! Do we encourage others? That highly depends on the personailty of the kid and the parents. You need to be willing and able to put lots of time into your kid and your kid needs to like "brain work" and not only running around. So everyone has to decide themselves for us it worked perfectly now for 2/3 of the Atlantic crossing.