Back To Nature

Buzz Lightyear enjoys a late breakfast

Now that Carl's foot is well on the way to mending - although he still insists he wants to keep the crutches until school starts again (no chance) - I thought I'd share more of our camping adventures with you all. For years I have resisted hubby's attempts to go camping with the kids. It all just seemed too stressful when they were small. We did try it in Sweden when Niels was 2 years old. We borrowed a large tent and headed off, stopping halfway at what turned out to be a crowded campground by a lake. Rain the previous two days combined with the sheer number of people had made the ground muddy and slippery, and as we struggled to figure out exactly where each of the 284 support poles in the damned tent were supposed to go it was inevitable that our lively 2 year old would get bored and wander off.
At that time Niels favourite activity was to try and climb into cars and pretend to drive them. Any car. Not just ours. A passing stranger, fellow camper or lurking child-snatcher would be his best friend if he could only sit in the front seat. After hauling him a couple of times out of cars nearby that belonged to other families he seemed to get the idea.

It was time for a new distraction. While we were still tied up in sheets of canvas (all the wrong shape! How can you make a tent out of 27 pieces of randomly cut canvas!?) Niels spotted the lake through the trees and that was it. His new favourite activity was called 'Run-to-the-lake-then-stop-when-the-water-reaches-my-chin-and-sit-down!'

Can't you see I'm busy?!

He literally would run into the water and plop himself down on the sandy bottom, the only sign of where he had disappeared being a stream of small bubbles gurgling out the sides of his nappy. To a stressed-out Mum who has just spent 8 hours or more in a car and is facing the prospect of sleeping in the mud with a kid determined to either disappear or drown, it was all too much. The rest is a bit of a blur but I vividly remember desperately just wanting to go home; Niels was crying, I was crying, hubby was still optimistically trying to get the damned tent up and I felt like the world was ending. Looking back I can laugh and wonder why I got so wound up about it, but back then it seemed like this was a cruel self-inflicted torture, certainly not a holiday.

The rest of the holiday went ok - especially once we gave up on the tent and stayed in a cabin - but my enthusiasm for camping with kids had evaporated.
Scroll forward 8 years and it didn't seem like such a big deal. The boys are older, more self sufficient, toilet trained, passed the age when they get tummy upsets and holiday illnesses. Surely nothing could go wrong...
The first night we were finally in our tent, me in the middle with a boy on either side like a mother hen with her chicks under her wings. It was dark and I was hoping I wouldn't notice how hard the ground and how thin my mattress was, when Niels said "Mum, my tummy feels funny........I feel sick!"

Frantically  fumbling with the zips I just managed to get the tent open and Niels outside before HEEEEEEAAAAAVVVVEEE! He puked everything he'd eaten during the day in a big steaming pile. Lovely.

Our (second) campsite

Needless to say the next morning we re-located to a new site. After taking ten minutes of agonizing stretching before I was able to heave my aching bones into an upright position, I staggered off to the office to organize a new site for the next night. By the time I had returned to prepare breakfast I was almost able to stand upright, and once the kids were off playing I headed home to fetch the thicker cushion we use for our garden bench to sleep on.

Lazy days...

Night 2. My new mattress is softer but only about 1.2 metres long. I'm 1.65 so obviously there's quite a bit of overhang. Utilising spare clothes wadded into piles I managed to create a narrow mattress just long enough to sleep on, assuming I don't need to move until morning. Rolling over is out of the question. We're all a bit tired tonight so the boys fell asleep quickly, leaving me to try not to think about rolling over or how stony the ground is. For hours. Eventually I must have fallen asleep because Carl woke me up at 3:45. "Mum my bed's wet...did you spill something?"  Unbelievable, he hasn't peed the bed for years but here we are. And we're not talking about a littel boy pee, we're talking a 10 litre "look what a man I am" flood which had half the tent awash. All the bedding had to be dragged out, the floor mopped, new pjs found and even another pillow made. Eventually, faced with the reality of 2 beds for 3 people, Carl crawled into my sleeping bag and promptly fell asleep, leaving me trying not to think about how numb my arm under his head was. And how I now couldn't lie flat. Until dawn.

That morning my mission home was to fetch new bedding for Carl and do two huge loads of washing.
Night 3. Nobody puked. Nobody peed. But we still hit the trifecta because Carl had injured his foot jumping into the lake and woke up crying at 2am with it swollen and sore. Eventually after lots of cuddles he settled down and slept again, once more leaving me to watch the tent slowly lighten as dawn approached.
So yes, our camping trip was a success, but I can't say it was easy. The kids had a blast and I enjoyed sharing it with them, but our next trip will also be within a short distance of home, I can promise you that. And I'm taking my bed.