Amanda Kloots Shares Travel Tips for Single Moms: Embracing the Joys and Challenges

On a day out in Malibu with Elvis, the inspiring star gets candid about travel with a toddler and the healing power of mother-son adventures along the California coast.

Amanda Kloots never planned to travel solo with a toddler. “There was a moment in time where I swore off traveling because it was near impossible as a single mom trying to get through an airport or a flight,” she explained. However, as she entered a suite at California’s Malibu Beach Inn on that sunny February morning, 3-year-old Elvis in tow, all smiles and snapping photos of the ocean view on her phone, she made it look enjoyable.

To her 735,000 Instagram followers, Kloots is an inspiration—a beacon of positivity in the face of hardship. She’s also honest about the struggle. When she lost her husband, Broadway star Nick Cordero, to COVID-19 in July 2020, less than a month after Elvis’s first birthday, the world cried with her. Kloots, now a Dancing With the Stars alum and a host of The Talk on CBS, had already been building a fan base with her dancing and acting credits and her budding fitness venture. Nevertheless, as she began to use the platform to address the realities of raising a baby, building a business, and just trying to move forward with her life while Cordero’s health was declining, a community formed around her.

Kloots refers to them as the “Instagram moms,” and she still reaches out to them for advice. When she took Elvis to Paris to visit her sister, Anna, last year, they were there with tips on how to navigate the long-haul flight from Los Angeles with a then-2-year-old. They led her to the dollar store, she said, to buy a bunch of little toys, just so she had something new to unpack every 20 minutes. They also led her to the JetKids by Stokke: “They ride around the airport on it, you can pack all their toys and stuff inside of it, and then it turns into a bed,” she said. “You put it under your seat and it has these extenders and a little mattress.”

Even the Instagram moms couldn’t save her, however, from what was to come. “We sit down and about an hour in, he falls back in his seat, and I think he’s going to fall asleep,” she recalled. “And then all of a sudden he starts projectile vomiting all over me, and himself, and everything I had brought.” While Kloots had packed a second outfit for Elvis, she hadn’t thought to bring one for herself, leaving her to sit in her soiled clothes for the remaining nine hours of the flight. “We get off the plane and my sister picks us up at the airport, and she’s waving to me, and she was like, ‘I brought you croissants!’ And I was like, ‘I’m covered in vomit!’”

Now, airplanes are one of Elvis’s passions. “He’s obsessed with flying, with airports, and those moving walkways,” Kloots stated, as she listed his in-flight essentials (“monster trucks, granola bars”), and he stopped what he was doing to cheer her on, clearly approving of his mom’s packing list. “We’ve now crossed over and I actually do love traveling with him,” she said, adding that it was Elvis who helped her, jaded by many a national Broadway tour, to rediscover her own love for travel. “It is fun reliving how exciting flying actually is, and how cool it is to go to sleep in one place and wake up in a whole other place and see that through his eyes. That is the blessing.”

“It is fun reliving how fun flying actually is, and how cool it is to go to sleep in one place and wake up in a whole other place and get to see that through his eyes. That is the blessing.”

That is family travel, after all: the highs, the lows, the growth. Finding joy in it through loved ones and coming out the other side closer. The happy moments that become shared memories and the disastrous ones that eventually turn into inside jokes.

Although Broadway schedules prevented Kloots and Cordero from traveling much as a couple before Elvis came along, she recalled a time she asked him when he was going to propose—“I was like, hello, I’m 34,” she laughed. Cordero suggested they spend the summer traveling together first, quoting Bill Murray: “If you have someone you think is the one, take them and travel around the world. Buy a plane ticket for the two of you to travel everywhere, to places that are hard to reach and hard to get out of. When you land at JFK and you’re still in love with that person, get married.”

Kloots was bewildered. “I was like, ‘When are we going to do that? I have a business, you’re in shows, what are you talking about? What universe are you living in? We don’t have time, money, or anything. What are you thinking?’”

However, she would later find herself relaying the same quote back to Cordero, at none other than New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, after an epic, five-week honeymoon through Italy, Africa, and Bali. “We were already married, of course, but I was like, ‘OK, we made it through unscathed, and I would travel with you any time,’” she said. “We were very different people, but we traveled very well together.”

During that trip, they attended a friend’s wedding and an anniversary celebration; went on safari, just the two of them; and Kloots taught at a retreat, where her sister joined them. Still, two days in South Africa stood out among the rest. After renting a car and driving from Cape Town to Babylonstoren, a captivating wine estate and farm in the Franschhoek wine valley, for lunch and a massage, Kloots and Cordero fell in love with the property. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to this place, and we have to spend more time here,’” she said. They drove back to their hotel in Cape Town and immediately booked a room at the estate for the following night. “I remember saying to him, ‘These two days are the most perfect days of my life,’” she said. “Just the most perfect days.”

Kloots said family and friends thought taking a five-week honeymoon was a crazy idea at the time, but she’s grateful they did it while they had the chance. “I think this is why I now live life like this—if you can go, go. If you can travel, travel. Don’t wait, just do it—because that was my last trip I ever took with Nick, and thank God we did that. The memories, the photos, the places, the time we spent together were some of the best days we ever had.”

“If you can go, go. If you can travel, travel. Don’t wait, just do it—because that was my last trip I ever took with Nick, and thank God we did that. The memories I have, the photos we have together, the places we got to see, the time together were some of the best days we ever spent together.”

She plans to travel back to South Africa with Elvis one day, to show him the wonderful memories his parents made. In the meantime, Kloots continues to enjoy taking him on California road trips, providing a remedy for difficult days while navigating through grief. “Sometimes, I just need to get out of my environment,” she shared. “Especially on weekends; weekends can still be tough since they typically involve family time or date nights.”

When those feelings hit, Kloots grabs Elvis and keeps moving, taking him out of their home in Los Angeles’s Laurel Canyon to explore Laguna Beach, Montecito, or San Luis Obispo. “When you’re seeing new things, and you’re on an adventure, and you’re spoiling yourself a little bit, it helps you feel better,” she said.

“When you’re seeing new things, and you’re on an adventure, and you’re spoiling yourself a little bit, it helps you feel better.”

And for Kloots, there’s no place more healing than the coast. “I don’t know if it’s because I’m a Pisces, but the ocean is my place to reset,” she mentioned. “It makes me happy. Sometimes, I even crave just seeing it or hearing it—sitting on the sand and watching the ocean glistening in the sun.”

Elvis enjoys it as well, his excitement evident as they blew bubbles and played in the sand on Carbon Beach in front of the hotel. Kloots shared they spend most weekends on the beach in Malibu when they aren’t traveling. “It’s so beneficial for him; he can’t really get into trouble. He can run around and find shells. It’s a great place to burn energy, fill your body, soul, and heart, feel the sunshine, and get that vitamin D.”

Traveling is a fantastic way for kids to learn about the world, Kloots believes. Growing up as one of five siblings, her childhood was full of travel adventures, often journeying in a large conversion van to places like Hilton Head Island or Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, for summer vacations. She credits her sense of adventure to her father, who would surprise the family with destinations they’d never seen before, even within an hour or two drive.

She’s instilling the same sense of adventure in Elvis, not only through their spontaneous travels but also in his nightly bedtime routine as described in her new children’s book, “Tell Me Your Dreams.” “It’s about a routine we started where I create a dream for him every night,” she explained. “So I ask him if he wants me to tell him his dream, and he says yes, and then I create an on-the-spot fantastical adventure.”

The main message Kloots wants him to take from her stories: “He can go anywhere, do anything, and see anyone.”

This resonates well, as “live your life” has become Kloots’s motto over the years (also the title of one of Cordero’s songs and of her memoir, “Live Your Life: My Story of Loving and Losing Nick Cordero”). As she and Elvis spent the rest of the day racing up and down Malibu Pier, sharing bites of ice cream at Malibu Farm Cafe, and enjoying secret handshakes and tickle fights, it was clear they were doing just that.

Kloots hopes Hawaii might be the next stop for their exciting mother-son adventures, but the possibilities remain endless for this dynamic duo.

Credits

TALENT: Amanda Kloots, Elvis Cordero

PHOTOGRAPHER: Jessica Sample

CREATIVE DIRECTION: Mariah Tyler

HOSTS: Malibu Beach Inn, Malibu Pier

EDITOR: Alisha Prakash

DESIGN: Joyce Lue

MAKEUP ARTIST: Troy Lazaris

HAIRSTYLIST: Nicole Walpert

STYLIST: Erin Noel

PRODUCER: Avenue 44 Productions

VIDEO: Joan Yeam, Brandon Scott Smith, Wes Reel

BOOKING: Bethany Heitman