Wild Sunshine and Lemonade

Call us crazy, but we took our 5 month old camping. I often feel like being the third kid has a lot of downsides: not as much mommy time, nothing but hand-me-downs, etc. But among the positives are all the cool things this baby gets to do. In her first five months, Larkin has been to the beach twice, spent hours out on a motorboat on a lake, had bonfires, and gone camping. Lucky girl!

Pippa and Sawyer are really into camping. We took them for the first time last year when Sawyer was almost 2 and Pippa was 3.5. For them it was great fun. For us it was a disaster. Sawyer thought it was hysterical to run towards the road and throw his toys towards the fire. Lil’ stinker 😉 But now that he’s a year wiser and Larkin is too small to crawl, we had a blast. And good thing, because before kids John and I were avid backpackers. We camped all the time to avoid pricey hotels. We camped on our honeymoon (ha! look at us, all young and 20-something and covered in sweat as we climbed peaks in Kauai).

Backpacking in Kauai

We camped most nights of a cross country road trip. And someday we hope to take some amazing trips with our kids that involve lots of nights in a tent. You know what that means…

START ‘EM YOUNG.

This fall we went to Mayo Lake in northern NC for two nights. The kids had a blast. We were the only ones there because we went on a Sunday/Monday night and they spent the entire time running around the large camping area, throwing rocks in the lake, and just being kids. The first night we set up camp and cooked hot dogs over the fire – obviously a win for everyone. They were so excited to get into the tent that the big kids asked to go to bed when the sun disappeared. Not that they went to bed, but hey.

Larkin and I shared the second tent with our battery powered noise maker to drown out the squealing, but otherwise it was so quiet! The second day we spent hiking to various playgrounds, playing soccer on the huge grass field, and even a sunset kayak trip as rain clouds rolled in. I spent the day before we left chopping and wrapping some bbq chicken packets that we grilled on the fire, followed by a dessert I learned a loooooong time ago in girl scouts. Banana Boats! These were a huge hit with the kids, they even said they were better than s’mores. I’ll post more on how to make them soon, but they are so dang easy.

Night number two was not so nice. The tent Larkin and I shared had a hole in the rainfly, so we had to cover it with a tarp (hey, it is almost 15 years old). And boy did that tarp sound like being inside a popcorn kettle when it poured all night long. She couldn’t sleep. It was ridiculously loud. I spend the night awake nursing her so that she could (sort of) sleep. And in the morning everything was covered in mud. The other tent had leaked and all the pillows were wet. At least it was memorable and the kids can’t wait to go again (hence the whole point of camping with young-ins). Because this mama spent the entire next day guzzling coffee and doing laundry and drying out camping gear. That is a chore I do not enjoy.

While we are by no means experts at camping with kids, I figured I’d share some of my tips:

1. Age matters. We found that babies up to crawling are easy, but that from about age 7months – 2.5 years old is a nightmare. They are into everything and are constantly trying to kill themselves. This is a no fly zone for us, lol.
2. Go for at least two nights. Y’all. I spent at least four hours prepping food, packing bins and bags, etc. Then it took us a solid 1.5 hours to haul it all from the car to the campsite and set up two tents with approximately 421 interruptions along the way. And then another 4 hours to clean it all and put it away. We’ve done a single night, and it’s just not worth the effort.
3. Take a noisemaker, especially if sleeping with a baby. It helps drown out noises of other kids/campsites.
4. Slow down your mornings with cocoa or tea. Our kids are up at the crack of dawn. They want to scarf down some food and get going on a hike, to the playground, etc. Which is great! Except that one of the camping luxuries for us adults is lounging around a hot fire drinking a hot beverage in the morning. Next time we will come prepared with cocoa – a good bribe to get them to chill out for an extra 30 minutes.
5. A flashlight for each kid. We made the mistake of bringing one for each tent. The older two fought over who got to play with theirs for HOURS. The dollar store sells them, so next time we will have plenty.

Have you been camping with young kids? Please share!

Didn’t Tom Hanks say this in A League of Their Own? I should know, I only watched that movie about 1,276 times growing up. I have never once done something easy and reflected later that it was great. The “great” moments in my life have all been hard-won (or lost) attempts to do something I was never confident I could do.

Like that time I was a crazy college student studying in Africa and we decided to climb Mt. Kenya during our fall break. Ill prepared, with little cold weather gear I shivered the sub-freezing night before our summit in a hut at something like 14,000 feet. Then got up at 2am to trek miles and miles up snowy, rocky cliffs to watch the sunrise. I’m surprised I didn’t fall off the edge to my death.

Y’all. There is something so incredibly wonderful about attempting something hard. It draws me in. Beckons me to try. For if I fail, I will know just how hard I can really push myself.

But when it comes to adding another baby, another life to our family, failure is not an option. I can fail at all kinds of small things. Forget to change a dirty diaper in time. Leave home without a change of clothes. You know. But  in the grand scheme of things, I have to love this little bundle (and the older two bundles) above all else. Hold them close when they’re being awful. I will my patience to grow more every day because lawdy I need oodles of it.

So this is my motto in these early baby days with Larkin. This kid had so many days of non-stop crying in her first six weeks I thought I would go insane. Pippa was the same way, but she was my first (and hey, she turned out ok right? Only a little crazy…). I could just deal with it. Now I have to lay this baby down to deal with the older two fighting, make 12 meals a day (no joke, my kids eat a LOT), do laundry. Anyone else have a colicky baby that was not their first? Now she is 13 weeks and our fussy days are fewer… but out of the blue we’ll have one. And it stinks.

Yet I know that this crying will come to an end and that the older kiddos will stop fighting. Deep down I know that when I look back on these days, I wouldn’t wish away the hard times. Because the hard is what makes it great.

Have you seen this article? It’s been circulating in my Facebook feed although it was written a few years back. And it’s awesome.

“The Disease of Being Busy.”

It makes me feel fortunate to have made friends and have close neighbors that share a common mindset when it comes to parenting:

We don’t over schedule.

We agree that kids need time to play and be supervised from afar (we all have kids under age 6). No helicopter parenting here.

We agree that we need to be outside getting messy as often as possible.

We agree that while school and sports and music lessons have their role in helping our kids become well rounded people, they should take a backseat in these early years.

Professor Safi, not only do you teach right down the street from me at Duke University (how ironic is that?), but you challenge an important stigma of which I often feel like I’m catapulting right toward the middle: the blackhole of elementary aged kids who are over scheduled, over-parented, and not allowed to just play.

It terrifies me because it’s everything I’ve worked hard not to do with my youngsters, yet I feel the pull of society calling me to enroll my oldest (4.5 years) in summer camp. Or preschool. Or a sport. She’s just 4.5!” says my inner voice. Let her be a child! She will have 13 years to be in school more hours than she plays, to be inside more than she is outside, and to endure waaaaaay more academic pressure than children should. Yet I still feel the lure of a society that values busy-ness and find myself wondering if I’m making the right choices.

Does anyone else feel societal pressure to conform to what the masses are doing? I fight it constantly and question if I’m doing what’s right for my family and my kids, and in the end my heart knows best.

You ask how is my heart? Right now it is often exhausted from being in full-time parent mode. But on this sunny morning it is joyous, because my colicky newborn is actually sleeping and my older kiddos are outside inventing games in mud puddles and picking blueberries. And that is exactly where they should be.