Well, our son survived his first camping experience at 7.5 months of age in Vermont. Instead of going through the story of his experience piece meal, I suppose it would be best to start from the beginning, which would be this past Friday. With my wife being a teacher, we couldn't embark on our journey to the great North till about 2 in the afternoon. Luckily my wife was able to leave work a little bit early as she had her last period free. Otherwise we would have left even later and encountered a lot more traffic. But regardless, we left around 2 and it took about 4 hours to get up there, due in part to a little bit of traffic and a necessary stop to feed our son. Despite those factors, the car ride went smoothly. Unfortunately, we arrived just after our son's normal bed time, rendering him fussier than usual. Despite his fussiness, we still had to cut the grass, set up the tent, and get everything situated. Despite the fact that we arrived past his bed time, he did OK. We were a little frantic, trying our best to get things done as quick as possible so we could get him to bed. Bed for him in Vermont is a little sleeping tent placed inside our much larger tent, mainly to keep him from rolling all over the place. Being new parents and not knowing any better, we decided to stick to our normal routine that we would have followed were we at home, namely feed him and put him to bed where he falls asleep. Well, we didn't take into account that he was in a strange place, in the middle of the woods surrounded by sounds and in a tent that doesn't even closely resemble his crib. Needless to say, our first attempt at putting him to bed didn't go over to well. Soon after placing him in his tent, he started screaming his head off. We tried letting him scream himself to sleep for about 15 minutes before realizing that sleep was not going to come easily to him and that he was probably scared out of his mind. So we went and brought him back out for a while till he calmed down. My wife then tried a different tactic that actually worked. She read her book to him for a while, then placed him in his tent and sang to him slowly closing the zipper. She continued singing till his eyes closed and she could slowly make her way out of our tent. Success.
After the first night, we had no clue how the rest of the weekend would go. He did manage to sleep through the night, waking up at his normal time of 530. From that point on, camping was fairly easy with him. He babbled away most of the day, more than he usually does, and was in good spirits overall, fascinated by everything around him. The only other tricky part to the weekend was the naps. Normally for his naps we put him in his crib where he falls right asleep. Well, up in Vermont, he wanted nothing to do with napping in his tent, rather, the only way he napped was when he got tired enough and passed out in his stroller. He didn't quite get as much nap time as he normally does, but he got enough to keep him content. We even found that he doesn't really mind bug bites yet. As he is so young and vulnerable, there was no way we were going to cover him with bug spray loaded with DEET. That being the case, the mosquitoes loved him and loaded him with bites. Trust me, it wasn't horrible, but he did get bit a number of times. For whatever reason, the bites didn't get enlarged and he didn't even try scratching them. Looking back now, I think I got more bug bites than he ever could have. So the fact that he didn't mind mosquito bites, and wasn't allergic to them, was a big plus for us. On top of being in good spirits for most of the day, he also decided to triple his intake of solid foods, taking us completely by surprise and forcing us to ration the food we had for him so we could make it through the weekend. All in all, everything was fantastic after that first night. He is a little trooper and will obviously come to love the outdoors.
Putting him to bed the other two nights we were up there was a piece of cake once we learned the trick. It made life so much easier for us and we will be forever grateful that he is a good sleeper. Even when he is napping, once he is asleep, he is asleep till he wants to wake up. Sunday morning after breakfast, I decided to split some wood using a combination of a sledge hammer, wedge, and ax. I started splitting the wood before our son went down for a nap. We knew he was due for one as his eyelids kept drooping lower and lower and his head started slumping to the side. I didn't pay much mind to the fact that I was making a considerable amount of noise while our son was about to go down for a nap. The noise of splitting wood, only about 40 feet away, did nothing to keep him from his nap and once he was down, it did nothing to wake him up. We consider ourselves lucky indeed. To know that our son loves camping before he is even a year old makes us truly happy. We normally go up to our land in Vermont at least 6 times over the course of a summer, normally just for a long weekend, but having the virgin camping experience of our son under our belts will make it that much easier going forward. It seems that no matter the situation, our son adjusts really well to it. At this point we are looking forward to our next camping trip with a slightly older son.
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