So here's my tip for Not Traveling with a child, and yet not just plugging that child into the TV for 10 straight days of stir-craziness:  Prezzies!

At Christmas, as usual, M received far more gifts than he could play with, let alone remember. So we confiscated about 1/3 of them, and stored them away for a rainy day.  This counted.  Some were small (Matchbox cars, new Thomas-the-Tank-engine vehicles), some were big (a kid-sized art table and easel), and some were of course electronic (a plug-and-play set of Star-Wars-themed video games).  We doled them out with little fanfare, and in no apparent pattern; after all, we don't want him to start believing that every day should start with the gift of a new toy, but when he'd hit the absolute depths of boredom, or when we needed a few minutes of sanity-repairing adult time, hey, new stuff to play with!

We also did analog stuff together - we made butter in the food processor, and used the buttermilk to make pancakes.  Cooking is one of M's favorite pasttimes, although when he complained that it was taking SO LONG for the cream to become butter, I considered shipping him to the Amish for a month or so.  We also made and decorated cupcakes (a mistake, as he ate about 12 of them when I wasn't looking), made suet and put it out for the birds, played simple games, read books (lots and lots of this), and drew pictures together.

I'm not going to say that I'm not relieved things are getting back to normal.  M's a raging extrovert and needs to get back to school and have more people around than just us, and I will be happy to get back to work and start earning money again.  But I was awfully glad that we'd rationed his embarrassment of riches at Christmas, and glad that we all found things to do that didn't involve the TV.