As I mentioned earlier this week, I spent the long weekend of labor day in Vermont with my wife and son. Once again, the weekend went by way too quickly and left both my wife and I longing for at least one extra day or two before heading back to work. Unfortunately, we couldn't stay an extra day. But back to the weekend. This past camping weekend was a little different than any other we had gone on with our son. All the previous trips were made as a family with the three of us and our two dogs packed into one car. Things changed a little this past weekend as my wife had to work and couldn't get out till 230 in the afternoon. With that late of a start, we wouldn't get to Vermont till at least 6, the latest 7. That would have left us with scarce little sunlight left to cut the grass and get the entire camp set up. In addition, with our son's bedtime being at 530, we would have had a fussy little guy on our hands. Instead, what we did was take two cars up, my wife's car and my work van. As I had the day off, I packed up the car with the food, clothes, our son, and the dogs and headed up early in the day. We were on the road by 10 and in Vermont by 1:45 which included a stop to feed our little man some mango's and peaches. I was expecting the trip with just the boys and the dogs to be a little trying as I had to take care of everyone. I was kind of hoping our son would sleep most of the way up, but instead he decided to sit there and stare out the window or play with the straps holding him in to his car seat. Out of the almost 4 hour trip, he maybe slept about 40 minutes. Not ideal, but he didn't fuss at all the rest of the trip so I really can't complain too much.
When we got there, I let the dogs out to run around and got our son situated in his stroller with his bottle of milk to watch me work. And work I did. As he was sitting watching, I trimmed a good 75% of the grass and weeds, got the tent set up by myself somehow, and got almost the entire kitchen and eating area up and running. The whole time he just sat, watched, and babbled away. After I had everything pretty much set up, which took me about 2.5 hours, it was time to play. At the end of any day when our son is getting tired, all he wants to do is walk around and tire himself out some more. Vermont was no different. So we walked around the clearing multiple times and ended up sitting down in the grass so he could play for about half an hour. He was absolutely fascinated by the tall grass, the clover, and the variety of weeds that grow randomly up there. As he was sitting there, he would gently go to grab a stem of grass with some seeds on it, and once within his grasp, rip it out. Most of the time, he would just throw the grass to the side and grab for some more. Every so often, he would offer up a gift of grass to me and place it in my hand. It is very cute to watch. But Friday offered us only limited time to play in the grass as I had to spend the rest of the time setting things up. The part I was worried about most was putting him to bed by myself. Every single other time we had gone camping with him, he screamed his head off the first night we were up there for at least half hour to forty five minutes and throughout the night. Often times, my wife would head in to calm him down so he could get back to sleep in our tent. I was expecting the worst as I headed into our tent, bottle and baby in hand. As he drank his bottle, I sang to him trying to settle him down. By the time he finished, I could see he was tired, but he hadn't quite fallen asleep in my arms. Figuring the best option was to place and run, I placed him in his little pea pod tent and made my escape. The worried look on his face as I placed him into his tent and re-assured him everything was OK was priceless. He didn't start crying right away, but about 30 seconds out, he started his screaming.
As I was expecting the worst, I sat down and waited to see how long he would carry on for. Much to my surprise and delight, the crying/screaming only lasted about 5 minutes if that. He was then silent for about half an hour before crying/screaming again for another 5 minutes after which I heard nothing till the morning. It seems that as he grows older, he is getting more accustomed to sleeping in a tent in the middle of the woods. The only downside to camping with him right now is that he doesn't want to nap during the day and if he does manage to fall asleep, it is only for a very short time and then he is wide awake and ready to go. Aside from the minimal naps, he did very well. He slept more than he usually does through the night averaging 13 hours instead of his normal 12. He didn't even mind the cooler weather that we had this past weekend in Vermont. It got up into the low 70's during the day and 40's at night. Perfect weather for camping. We still have one more family camping trip planned for October. It will be right around his birthday, Columbus day weekend, and it is sure to be quite a bit chillier up there. I am sure that he will be fine as he normally is. For now, as I work through the long days, I will think about the cool relaxing weather up in Vermont and wait for the weather to slowly make its way down to Connecticut. Hopefully the cool weather will come sooner rather than later and push all this nasty humidity out of here.
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