One Year (Plus a Few Odd Days Later)

If you are a faithful reader of this blog, you might remember my account of the girl's first camping trip. But you might not know that this camping trip actually prompted my brother-in-law to send Dean an e-mail about how ill-behaved our children were and how unnecessarily stressful we seemed to make parenting. (It's worth noting that my brother-in-law does not have children of his own and sees my kids once a year at best.) For my part, I thought our first camping trip was pretty much what you'd expect when camping with children ages one and three: It was messy. It was loud. It was disorganized. Yes, there were moments of fun. But every parent knows that parenting is hard enough in the best of circumstances. Subtract the comforts of home, throw in a porta potty and the unfamiliarity of sleeping in a tent, and you get exactly what we got on our last camping trip. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Well, a year has passed, and I'd have to say that camping this time was a different story. It may have been the presence of several other children with whom to play and make a mess. Or it may be that the girls are just getting older. Who knows. What I do know is that this camping trip made me wonder what kind of e-mail we'd have gotten from my brother-in-law this time around. But--of course--you don't hear from people about your children when they are reasonably well-behaved. You only hear about them when they are being little demons because that's when people feel the need to question your parenting ability. And, honestly, I'll be up front about this: I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to parenting. There. I said it. My lofty goals are to make sure my children are healthy, safe, and don't do serious damage to themselves, to anyone else, or to other people's property. I'm making the rest up as we go along.

So anyhow, back to camping. Before Ella and Sadie were born, we had an annual tradition of camping with friends over Memorial Day weekend. This was a somewhat sketchy tradition because the weather is typically not so camping-friendly over Memorial Day. Now that the lot of our friends have children, I hope we'll start a new tradition of camping with the kiddies. This was our first go at it, and everyone seemed willing to plan another trip some time soon, so that must mean it was a success. All told, there were four sets of parents, along with three 4-year-olds, one 3-year-old, one 1-year-old, one 2-year-old, and one 7-month-old (though the 7-month-old and 3-year-old didn't spend the night). It was chaos--but the good sort of chaos, and for the most part, the children entertained themselves, there was minimal fighting, and the adults were (mostly) able to relax and hang out. Of course, there was an inappropriate game or two played among the four-year-olds in the privacy of the tent, but I will chalk that up to kids being kids....

Last time, our biggest camping hurdle was getting Sadie to go to sleep in the tent. She was overtired, and I was unwilling to let her cry herself to sleep in a foreign environment. In the end, we had to load her into the car and drive around until she fell asleep.

This time, we all decided to just let the kids hang out until they crashed. For Sadie, the crash came around 8. She was pretty clearly ready for bed, so I took her into the tent, where she climbed into her pack n play all on her own. I stayed in the tent with her for about 10 minutes. By that time, she was asleep. Easy.

Another issue we've had with camping in the past is that my kids wake up at the crack of dawn. We're talking about 5:00 in the morning. Which really, really sucks when you're stuck in a tent with nowhere to go and nothing to do. This time, however, we were pleasantly surprised: They slept until nearly 7:00. That never happens at home and was pretty freaking awesome.

Highlights of the camping trip included: a moonlight walk (for the older kids), forrays into the woods to look for wolves (pretend wolves), a trip to the campground park (where much fighting ensued), the shortest hike Dean and I have ever, ever taken (and this includes hikes the girls have been on with us), ice cream, hot dogs, roasting marshmallows over the fire.

I do have photos but did not have the energy to upload them last night. Maybe tonight.