camping

I wasn't sure if it would fly, this business of our annual camping trip plus Maelyn. I'd been tortured on a vacation once before with her. When we arrived at the site, perfectly timed just before her first nap I felt optimistic that it would go smoothly. We hurried the tent up and put her into her playpen (which we'd practiced sleeping in the week earlier). She screamed. Her lungs out. Hysterically. Despite obvious exhaustion, she was clearly communicating...this is not my room (or any of the rooms that I've agreed to sleep in). I got her up, and napless we headed for the beach. The night she did a similar thing, but eventually drifted off. I was discouraged, and not hopeful that I'd remain at the site for the duration of the booking...

That night was fine, and by the next day she had (almost) given the tent the stamp of approval. By the last day she was happy in the tent - in fact, her fussiest was when we were packing the tent back up!

Besides the first day, Maelyns biggest impact on the trip was our early mornings and thus -- earlier bedtimes. While we previously might have lazed in bed till 8 or 11 we were up with the crack of dawn and exhausted by 10pm. If it cramped our co-campers style (Chris and Shereen), they were very gracious about it.

Shereen and Maelyn


We want Maelyn to learn young that the best vacations include reading a book on the beach.



WATER BABY! This child loves the water at any temperature.

Leah and Maelyn playing her favorite "rocks in the cup" game.

Chris doubted that it would happen, but snuggles occurred between these two. Further proof:






Camping lesson #1: maintain sleep schedule as best as possible. Camping lesson #2: Bring the Jolly Jumper. Maelyn's portable highchair annoyingly didn't fit on the picnic table so she jumped through basically every meal.

I was going to label this post as "annual camping trip edition 5" or something like that but when I thought about it, I realized that Tim and Chris and I have been camping every summer since before we were married. So, since the summer of 2000. Which means we've been camping together 9 years running. That's some faithfulness. Cheers Chris! Here's to 9 more!